The implementation of webdriverIo is slightly different from selenium. In webdriverIO `$('table').$$('td')` will check for direct child 'td under 'table', and as td is not a direct child it won't return anything. instead, try: $('table').$$(' td') (See if this works) or $$('table td') Space in 'CSS' is similar to // in xpath Better raise issue with webdriver io