Chromedriver Autoinstaller

0.6.4 · active · verified Tue Apr 14

chromedriver-autoinstaller is a Python library that automatically downloads and installs the appropriate Chromedriver executable for the currently installed version of Google Chrome on your system. It supports Linux, MacOS, and Windows operating systems. The current version is 0.6.4 and the library is actively maintained, with a recent release in January 2024.

Warnings

breaking Chrome v115+ introduced a new driver restructuring (Chrome-for-Testing), which broke older versions of `chromedriver-autoinstaller`'s ability to locate and download the correct driver.
Fix: Update to `chromedriver-autoinstaller` version `0.6.2` or newer. These versions implement the updated driver location logic.
gotcha Running Chrome or ChromeDriver as the root user (administrator) on Linux is highly discouraged and can cause Chrome to crash, often resulting in 'DevToolsActivePort file doesn't exist' errors.
Fix: Configure your environment to run Chrome as a regular user instead. If absolutely necessary (e.g., in some containerized environments), `ChromeOptions().add_argument('--no-sandbox')` can be used, but this is an unsupported and potentially risky workaround.
gotcha When bundling applications with tools like `cx_Freeze` or PyInstaller, missing SSL-related DLLs (e.g., `libcrypto-1_1-x64.dll`, `libssl-1_1-x64.dll` on Windows) can prevent `chromedriver-autoinstaller` from downloading files, leading to SSL errors during installation.
Fix: Ensure all necessary Python runtime and SSL DLLs are explicitly included in your application's build process or environment setup for bundled applications.
gotcha Be careful with package naming. The correct package name for this library is `chromedriver-autoinstaller`. Other similar-sounding packages like `chromedriver-autoinstall` or `chromedriver-autoinstaller-fix` exist on PyPI and may offer different functionality, bug fixes, or maintenance levels.
Fix: Always confirm the exact package name `chromedriver-autoinstaller` when installing to ensure you are using the intended library.

Install

pip install chromedriver-autoinstaller Install stable version

Imports

install
```
import chromedriver_autoinstaller
chromedriver_autoinstaller.install()
```
The `install()` method directly handles the download and setup of the ChromeDriver.

Quickstart

This quickstart demonstrates how to use `chromedriver-autoinstaller` to ensure the correct Chromedriver is available, then initializes a Selenium WebDriver for Chrome, navigates to Google, prints the page title, and quits.

import chromedriver_autoinstaller
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
import os

# Ensure chromedriver is installed and up-to-date
chromedriver_autoinstaller.install()

# Set up Chrome options (e.g., headless mode for automation)
chrome_options = Options()
# chrome_options.add_argument('--headless') # Uncomment for headless browsing
# chrome_options.add_argument('--no-sandbox') # Recommended for Linux environments, especially in CI/CD

# Initialize the WebDriver
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=chrome_options)

# Navigate to a website
driver.get("https://www.google.com")

# Print the page title to verify
print(f"Page title: {driver.title}")

# Close the browser
driver.quit()

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