XPath Compass

Point at any element for XPath, CSS, and Playwright selectors — with Shadow DOM support. Built for web automation and QA engineers.

XPath Compass helps web automation engineers, QA testers, and scraper developers find reliable selectors without hand-writing them in DevTools. How it works: • Click the toolbar icon and hit "Pick an element", press Alt+Shift+X, or right-click any element and choose "Inspect with XPath Compass" • Hover the page — elements highlight as you move • Click the one you want and get ranked XPath, CSS, AND Playwright locators, each with a one-click Copy button • Walk the DOM from your pick (parent / siblings / child buttons) — no re-picking when you clicked the span inside the button • Test any selector: paste an XPath or CSS into the panel and see the live match count with every match outlined on the page • Hover any candidate to preview exactly what it matches Shadow DOM (most tools silently fail here): • Picks elements inside open shadow roots and generates deep CSS selectors plus a JS piercing chain that actually reaches them — instead of producing a broken XPath with no explanation Playwright locators: • getByRole, getByLabel, getByText, getByPlaceholder, getByTestId and more — the locators Playwright's own docs recommend Copy as code: • Raw selector, Selenium (Python or Java), Playwright, or Cypress — every Copy button wraps the selector in ready-to-paste code What makes the selectors solid: • Prioritizes human-readable anchors: data-testid/data-cy/data-qa attributes, IDs, form labels ("//input[@id = //label[.='Email']/@for]"), aria-labels, and visible text • Filters out auto-generated IDs and hashed CSS-in-JS classes that break between builds • Verifies every candidate against the live page — if a selector matches multiple elements, you're told, and offered a pinned (…)[n] variant that matches exactly the element you picked • Handles SVG and other namespaced elements correctly • Always includes an absolute path as a last resort, clearly marked fragile Also included: • Pick history in the popup, so you can retrieve earlier XPaths • Optional auto-copy of the top candidate the moment you click • Optional "prefer visible text" ranking mode for team-readable selectors Privacy: XPath Compass only runs on a page when you invoke it there (activeTab), and nothing ever leaves your machine — history is stored locally in your browser.