How to work with a specific version of ChromeDriver while Chrome Browser gets updated automatically through Python selenium

python google-chrome selenium selenium-webdriver selenium-chromedriver

28,587

Solution 1

No, there is no other alternative than updating the ChromeDriver binary versions, while the Chrome Browser keeps on getting updated automatically.

Reason

Each Chrome Browser is released after certain feature additions, modifications and removals from the existing features. To comply with the current set of Browser Features, Chrome Team releases the compatible ChromeDriver binary time to time. These ChromeDriver binaries are capable to interact with the Chrome Browser. Certain version of a ChromeDriver binary supports a specific range of Chrome Browser versions (some of the recent) as below:

ChromeDriver v84.0.4147.30 (2020-05-28)
```
Supports Chrome version 84
```
ChromeDriver v83.0.4103.39 (2020-05-05)
```
Supports Chrome version 83
```
ChromeDriver v82 was intensionally skipped.
ChromeDriver v81.0.4044.138 (2020-05-05)
```
Supports Chrome version 81
```
ChromeDriver v80.0.3987.106 (2020-02-13)
```
Supports Chrome version 80
```
ChromeDriver v79.0.3945.36 (2019-11-18)
```
Supports Chrome version 79
```
ChromeDriver v78.0.3904.70 (2019-10-21)
```
Supports Chrome version 78
```
ChromeDriver v77.0.3865.40 (2019-08-20)
```
Supports Chrome version 77
```
ChromeDriver v76.0.3809.126 (2019-08-20)
```
Supports Chrome version 76
```
ChromeDriver v75.0.3770.8 (2019-04-29)
```
Supports Chrome version 75
```
ChromeDriver v74.0.3729.6 (2019-03-14)
```
Supports Chrome version 74
```
ChromeDriver v73.0.3683.68 (2019-03-06)
```
Supports Chrome version 73
```
ChromeDriver v2.46 (2019-02-01)
```
Supports Chrome v71-73
```
ChromeDriver v2.45 (2018-12-10)
```
Supports Chrome v70-72
```
ChromeDriver v2.44 (2018-11-19)
```
Supports Chrome v69-71
```
ChromeDriver v2.43 (2018-10-16)
```
Supports Chrome v69-71
```
ChromeDriver v2.42 (2018-09-13)
```
Supports Chrome v68-70
```
ChromeDriver v2.41 (2018-07-27)
```
Supports Chrome v67-69
```
ChromeDriver v2.40 (2018-06-07)
```
Supports Chrome v66-68
```
ChromeDriver v2.39 (2018-05-30)
```
Supports Chrome v66-68
```
ChromeDriver v2.38 (2018-04-17)
```
Supports Chrome v65-67
```
ChromeDriver v2.37 (2018-03-16)
```
Supports Chrome v64-66
```
ChromeDriver v2.36 (2018-03-02)
```
Supports Chrome v63-65
```
ChromeDriver v2.35 (2018-01-10)
```
Supports Chrome v62-64
```
ChromeDriver v2.34 (2017-12-10)
```
Supports Chrome v61-63
```
ChromeDriver v2.33 (2017-10-03)
```
Supports Chrome v60-62
```
ChromeDriver v2.32 (2017-08-30)
```
Supports Chrome v59-61
```
ChromeDriver v2.31 (2017-07-21)
```
Supports Chrome v58-60
```
ChromeDriver v2.30 (2017-06-07)
```
Supports Chrome v58-60
```
ChromeDriver v2.29 (2017-04-04)
```
Supports Chrome v56-58
```

Conclusion

To keep your script/program interactive with the updated Chrome Browser you have to keep the version of ChromeDriver binary in sync with the Chrome Browser as per the compatibility.

Solution 2

i am using this one library that is working for me .

https://pypi.org/project/chromedriver-autoinstaller/

Project description

chromedriver-autoinstaller Automatically download and install chromedriver that supports the currently installed version of chrome. This installer supports Linux, MacOS and Windows operating systems.

Installation

pip install chromedriver-autoinstaller

Example

from selenium import webdriver
import chromedriver_autoinstaller


chromedriver_autoinstaller.install()  # Check if the current version of chromedriver exists
                                      # and if it doesn't exist, download it automatically,
                                      # then add chromedriver to path

driver = webdriver.Chrome()
driver.get("http://www.python.org")
assert "Python" in driver.title

edit. i also use the options like it was commented by @ATJ but for defining chrome's binary_location() the not the CHROMEDRIVER_PATH. actually, one of the things that i like in this extension is not having the need to specify this path, because it already takes care of that. before using it i used to loose time puting the path, searching where it was, puting copies of the driver in the projects folders or system path folders.

I also made a template with this quick code to use selenium, i open new files with that and then continue that is it:


import chromedriver_autoinstaller
from selenium import webdriver
chromedriver_autoinstaller.install()
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.binary_location = ('C:\\Program Files\\Google\\Chrome\\Application\\chrome.exe')
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options)

and also this quick script to run on terminal on 1st time using in a new pc


import os
os.system("pip install  selenium ")
os.system("pip install  chromedriver_autoinstaller ")

-the actual complete version of mine template(leaving comment is faster and reduce duplicate work, uncommenting makes it more dependence-less)


import chromedriver_autoinstaller
from selenium import webdriver
#from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
# import os
#    # to use when 1st time on the machine and then leave comented
# os.system("pip install  selenium ")
# os.system("pip install  chromedriver_autoinstaller ")
chromedriver_autoinstaller.install()
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.headless = False
options.binary_location = ('C:\\Program Files\\Google\\Chrome\\Application\\chrome.exe')
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options)

edit. 2 -the actual complete version of mine template with binary loc. well . i just tested the code with the binary_location and it works too. well, dont know wy it was not working before, this locations is the default so, should not change unless the person changed when installing chrome. good thing to revisit it now, i just saved a line from all my future uses of this.


import chromedriver_autoinstaller
from selenium import webdriver
#from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
# import os
#    # to use when 1st time on the machine and then leave comented
# os.system("pip install  selenium ")
# os.system("pip install  chromedriver_autoinstaller ")
chromedriver_autoinstaller.install()
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.headless = False
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options)

Solution 3

For Ubuntu/Linux:

Just use this to update to the latest: https://stackoverflow.com/a/57306360/4240654

version=$(curl -s https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/LATEST_RELEASE)
wget -qP "/tmp/" "https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/${version}/chromedriver_linux64.zip"
sudo unzip -o /tmp/chromedriver_linux64.zip -d /usr/bin

And then this if you need to update Chrome: https://superuser.com/questions/130260/how-to-update-google-chrome-in-ubuntu

sudo apt-get --only-upgrade install google-chrome-stable

Solution 4

Yes you can.

The question: "How to work with a specific version of ChromeDriver while Chrome Browser gets updated automatically through Python selenium"

Like you rightfully pointed out the Chrome Browser updates automatically. If the ChromeDriver is a static file on your computer for one specific version of the Chrome Browser, it means that you will have to download a new ChromeDriver every time the Browser updates.

Luckily there is a way to update the ChromeDriver automatically too!

You can automatically use the correct chromedriver by using the webdrive-manager.

Install the webdrive-manager:

pip install webdriver-manager

Then use the driver in python as follows

from selenium import webdriver
from webdriver_manager.chrome import ChromeDriverManager

driver = webdriver.Chrome(ChromeDriverManager().install())

Solution 5

you can use below shell script to make sure you download the correct version of the chrome driver. You can do something similar to this in python to make it work but you get a idea of how to proceed towards a solution for this problem.

%sh
#downloading compatible chrome driver version
#getting the current chrome browser version
**chromeVersion=$(google-chrome --product-version)**
#getting the major version value from the full version
**chromeMajorVersion=${chromeVersion%%.*}**
# setting the base url for getting the release url for the chrome driver
**baseDriverLatestReleaseURL=https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/LATEST_RELEASE_**
#creating the latest release driver url based on the major version of the chrome
**latestDriverReleaseURL=$baseDriverLatestReleaseURL$chromeMajorVersion**
**echo $latestDriverReleaseURL**
#file name of the file that gets downloaded which would contain the full version of the chrome driver to download
**latestDriverVersionFileName="LATEST_RELEASE_"$chromeMajorVersion**
#downloading the file that would contain the full release version compatible with the major release of the chrome browser version
**wget $latestDriverReleaseURL** 
#reading the file to get the version of the chrome driver that we should download
**latestFullDriverVersion=$(cat $latestDriverVersionFileName)**
**echo $latestFullDriverVersion**
#creating the final URL by passing the compatible version of the chrome driver that we should download
**finalURL="https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/"$latestFullDriverVersion"/chromedriver_linux64.zip"**
**echo $finalURL**
**wget $finalURL**

I was able to get the compatible version of chrome browser and chrome driver using the above approach when running scheduled job on the databricks environment and it worked like a charm without any issues.

Hope it helps others in one way or other.

View more solutions

28,587

Author by

Hong

Updated on January 02, 2022

Comments

Hong over 2 years

I'm new comer of Selenium, and I can use selenium with Chromedriver to do basic auto-test now, the code works fine, but the problem is Chrome browser always update automatically at the backend, and code always fail to run after Chrome update. I know I need to download new chromedriver to solve this issue, but I wonder if there's any way to solve this issue without disabling chromebrowser update? tks.

I'm using Windows 10 / Chrome Version 67 / Python 3.6.4 / Selenium 3.12.0
ATJ over 3 years

This worked for me [using Python and Chrome on a Mac]. I did have to make an additional change to my code, which was that I was specifying the path of the driver explicitly [as in driver = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path=CHROMEDRIVER_PATH,options=c‌hrome_options) ], but had to remove the explicit mention for it to work. (So my code is now [driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=chrome_options)])
bigubr about 3 years

@ATJ , this should not be necessaire , look that the extension already do this "# then add chromedriver to path" if its not doing maybe its not working properly. you can open an issue in the github project github.com/yeongbin-jo/python-chromedriver-autoinstaller/…
Admin over 2 years

As it’s currently written, your answer is unclear. Please edit to add additional details that will help others understand how this addresses the question asked. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center.
Daniel Williams almost 2 years

Are there any alternatives to using ChromeDriver? This constant updating wreaks havoc with some of my clients.