Implicit Wait
An implicit wait sets a default timeout applied globally to every element lookup in a test session — if an element isn't immediately found, the driver keeps polling for it up to that timeout before failing. It's a coarser, less precise alternative to explicit waits.
Implicit waits are set once per session ("wait up to 10 seconds for any element lookup") rather than per-condition, which makes them easy to set up but blunt in practice — every single lookup pays the same wait policy, whether the specific situation needs it or not.
Mixing implicit and explicit waits in the same test is a well-known source of unpredictable timing bugs in Selenium specifically, since the two interact in ways that are hard to reason about — most modern guidance recommends picking one strategy (usually explicit waits) and avoiding the mix entirely.
