Never Mix Implicit and Explicit Waits

Why Mixing Is Bad

The Selenium documentation warns: do not use implicit and explicit waits together. Inside an explicit wait, every findElement also waits implicitly, so the total time becomes unpredictable.

Setup	Waiting for an element that never appears	Actual time before failure
explicit 10 s only	polls every 500 ms	about 10 s
implicit 10 s + explicit 15 s	each poll itself waits 10 s	about 20 s (can vary)
implicit 10 s + `invisibilityOf` check	each findElement waits for the element to exist	slow "is it gone?" checks

Team Rule

Set implicit wait to 0 (the default) and use explicit waits for everything.
Wrap common waits in helper methods so tests stay short.

public class Waits {
    private final WebDriverWait wait;
    public Waits(WebDriver driver) { this.wait = new WebDriverWait(driver, Duration.ofSeconds(10)); }

    public WebElement visible(By by)   { return wait.until(ExpectedConditions.visibilityOfElementLocated(by)); }
    public WebElement clickable(By by) { return wait.until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(by)); }
    public void gone(By by)            { wait.until(ExpectedConditions.invisibilityOfElementLocated(by)); }
}

waits.clickable(By.id("add-to-cart")).click();
waits.gone(By.cssSelector(".spinner"));