Selenium gives "selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: unknown error: cannot find Chrome binary" on Mac

Trying to get selenium to work with Python 3 for web scraping purposes:

from selenium import webdriver
chrome_path = r"/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/bin/chromedriver"
driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_path)

I get the following error message:

selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: unknown error: cannot find Chrome binary

A similar question was addressed here, but what is baffling to me is that Chrome is already installed on my system. The other asker apparently didn't have it on their computer. I'm running latest version of Mac OS.

Solution 1:

The issue is that chromedriver also needs to know where chrome is. In your case it is at a non-default path. So you need to specify the complete path to the Google Chrome binary.

options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.binary_location = "/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome"
chrome_driver_binary = "/usr/local/bin/chromedriver"
driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_driver_binary, chrome_options=options)

Above code is what you should use

Solution 2:

I have met this annoying problem when I am lerning selenium. This is my solution: (MacOS 10.13.4)

1. uninstall my chrome
2. use homebrew to install chromedriver: brew cask install chromedriver
3. use homebrew to install chrome: brew cask install google-chrome

Thanks to homebrew now chrome and chromedriver are installed in the same folder and this problem will be automatically solved.

Solution 3:

It is important on Win to set the name of chrome.exe otherwise it fail to create a process (see below):

  from selenium import webdriver
  from webdriver_manager.chrome import ChromeDriverManager

  options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
  options.binary_location = r"C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe"
  chrome_driver_binary = r"C:/Users/Max/.wdm/chromedriver/75.0.3770.8/win32/chromedriver.exe"
  driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_driver_binary, chrome_options=options)
  driver.get('http://web.whatsapp.com')

selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: unknown error: Failed to create a Chrome process.

For Firefox (download driver https://github.com/mozilla/geckodriver/releases):

  options = webdriver.FirefoxOptions()
  #options.add_argument('-headless')
  #options.binary_location = r"C:\maxbook\maxboxpython\geckodriver-v0.24.0-win64\geckodriver.exe"
  options.binary_location = r"C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe"
  firefox_driver_binary = r"C:\maxbook\maxboxpython\geckodriver-v0.24.0-win64\\"
  driver = webdriver.Firefox(firefox_driver_binary, options=options)

Solution 4:

If anyone is getting the same error on a linux machine, then you are missing google chrome installation as one of the steps needed for chrome driver to work.

Follow this link to install Google chrome on Linux.

Now, check code

driver = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path='/usr/bin/chromedriver', options=chrome_options, service_args=['--verbose', '--log-path=/tmp/chromedriver.log'])

For me it worked.

Solution 5:

options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.binary_location = r"<YOUR_CHROME_PATH>\chrome.exe"
chrome_driver_path = r"<PATH_TO_CHROME_DRIVER>\chromedriver.exe>"

browser = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_driver_path, chrome_options=options)