session not created: This version of ChromeDriver only supports Chrome version 74 error with ChromeDriver Chrome using Selenium

I'm trying to run RSelenium using the rsDriver function, but when I run rD <- rsDriver() I get a message telling me I need a newer version of Chrome:

> rD <- rsDriver()
checking Selenium Server versions:
BEGIN: PREDOWNLOAD
BEGIN: DOWNLOAD
BEGIN: POSTDOWNLOAD
checking chromedriver versions:
BEGIN: PREDOWNLOAD
BEGIN: DOWNLOAD
BEGIN: POSTDOWNLOAD
checking geckodriver versions:
BEGIN: PREDOWNLOAD
BEGIN: DOWNLOAD
BEGIN: POSTDOWNLOAD
checking phantomjs versions:
BEGIN: PREDOWNLOAD
BEGIN: DOWNLOAD
BEGIN: POSTDOWNLOAD
[1] "Connecting to remote server"

Selenium message:session not created: This version of ChromeDriver only supports Chrome version 74
  (Driver info: chromedriver=74.0.3729.6 (255758eccf3d244491b8a1317aa76e1ce10d57e9-refs/branch-heads/3729@{#29}),platform=Mac OS X 10.14.3 x86_64)

Could not open chrome browser.
Client error message:
     Summary: SessionNotCreatedException
     Detail: A new session could not be created.
     Further Details: run errorDetails method
Check server log for further details.

The error message appears to say that I need Chrome version 74.0.3729.6, but when I look in Chrome's settings, it tells me that I'm running the latest stable version (73.0.3683.75). Upon further googling, 74.0.3729.6 is a pre-release dev version of Chrome: do I need to install this in order to use ChromeDriver with RSelenium?

I'm not wedded to the idea of using Chrome, but I haven't been able to get rsDriver to use Firefox: when I specify browser = "firefox", rsDriver gives me the same error message about ChromeDriver not supporting my version of Chrome.

My session info is:

R version 3.5.2 (2018-12-20)
Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin15.6.0 (64-bit)
Running under: macOS Mojave 10.14.3

Matrix products: default
BLAS: /System/Library/Frameworks/Accelerate.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/vecLib.framework/Versions/A/libBLAS.dylib
LAPACK: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/3.5/Resources/lib/libRlapack.dylib

locale:
[1] en_GB.UTF-8/en_GB.UTF-8/en_GB.UTF-8/C/en_GB.UTF-8/en_GB.UTF-8

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
 [1] wdman_0.2.4     forcats_0.3.0   stringr_1.3.1   dplyr_0.7.8     purrr_0.2.5     readr_1.3.1     tidyr_0.8.2    
 [8] tibble_2.0.1    ggplot2_3.1.0   tidyverse_1.2.1 rvest_0.3.2     xml2_1.2.0      RSelenium_1.7.5

Solution 1:

For MacOS chromedriver upgrade did the trick:

brew upgrade --cask chromedriver

Solution 2:

This error message...

Selenium message:session not created: This version of ChromeDriver only supports Chrome version 74
  (Driver info: chromedriver=74.0.3729.6 (255758eccf3d244491b8a1317aa76e1ce10d57e9-refs/branch-heads/3729@{#29}),platform=Mac OS X 10.14.3 x86_64)

...implies that the ChromeDriver expects the Chrome Browser version to be 74.

Quick installation of the latest ChromeDriver

To install the latest version of ChromeDriver you can use:

• Mac users with Homebrew: brew tap homebrew/cask && brew cask install chromedriver
• Debian based Linux distros: sudo apt-get install chromium-chromedriver
• Windows users with Chocolatey installed: choco install chromedriver

Analysis

Your main issue is the incompatibility between the version of the binaries you are using as follows:

• You are using chromedriver=74.0.3729.6
• Release Notes of chromedriver=74.0.3729.6 clearly mentions the following :

Supports Chrome v74

• You are using the currently released chrome=73.0

So there is a clear mismatch between the ChromeDriver v74.0.3729.6 and the Chrome Browser v73.0

Solution

• Downgrade ChromeDriver to ChromeDriver v73.0.3683.68 level.
• Keep Chrome version at Chrome v73 level. (as per ChromeDriver v73.0.3683.68 release notes)
• Clean your Project Workspace through your IDE and Rebuild your project with required dependencies only.
• If your base Web Client version is too old, then uninstall it and install a recent GA and released version of Web Client.
• Execute your @Test.
• Always invoke driver.quit() within tearDown(){} method to close & destroy the WebDriver and Web Client instances gracefully.

Reference

You can find a relevant detailed discussion in:

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

Solution 3:

I encountered the same issue today and found this post and others from Google. I think I may have a more direct solution as a modification of your code. The previous answer is correct in identifying the mismatch in versions.

I tried the proposed solutions to no avail. I found that the versions were correct on my computer. However, this mismatch error was not resulting from the actual versions installed on the computer, but rather the RSelenium code is seeking the "latest" version of Chrome/ChromeDriver by default argument. See ?rsDriver() help page for the arguments.

If you run the code binman::list_versions("chromedriver") as specified in the help documentation, then you can identify the versions of compatible with the function. In my case, I was able to use the following code to establish a connection.

driver <- rsDriver(browser=c("chrome"), chromever="73.0.3683.68", extraCapabilities = eCaps)

You should be able to specify your version of Chrome with the chromever= argument. I had to use the closest version, though (my chrome version was "73.0.3683.75").

Hope this helps!

Solution 4:

Updating the Google Chrome version to 74 worked for me.

Steps: 1. Go to Help -> About Google Chrome -> Chrome will automatically look for updates(update Chrome to the latest version)