I would like to use an existing installation of chrome (or firefox or brave browser) with selenium. Like that I could set prespecified settings / extensions (e.g. start nord-vpn when opening a new instance) that are active when the browser is opened with selenium.
I know there is selenium.webdriver.service with the "executeable-path" option, but it doesn't seem to work when you specify a specific chrome.exe, the usage seems to be for the chrome-driver only and then it still opens a "fresh" installation of chrome.
Starting selenium with extension-file I think is also not an option to use with the nord-vpn extension, as I have two-factor authentication active and login every single time would take too much time and effort, if possible at all.
Firefox profile
To use the existing installation of firefox you have to pass the profile path through set_preference() method using an instance of Option from selenium.webdriver.common.options as follows:
from selenium.webdriver import Firefox
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.firefox.service import Service
from selenium.webdriver.firefox.options import Options
profile_path = r'C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\s8543x41.default-release'
options=Options()
options.set_preference('profile', profile_path)
service = Service('C:\\BrowserDrivers\\geckodriver.exe')
driver = Firefox(service=service, options=options)
driver.get("https://www.google.com")
You can find a relevant detailed discussion in Error update preferences in Firefox profile: 'Options' object has no attribute 'update_preferences'
Chrome profile
Where as to use an existing installation of google-chrome you have to pass the user profile path through add_argument() using the user-data-dir key through an instance of Option from selenium.webdriver.common.options as follows:
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service
options = Options()
options.add_argument("user-data-dir=C:\\Users\\username\\AppData\\Local\\Google\\Chrome\\User Data\\Default")
s = Service('C:\\BrowserDrivers\\chromedriver.exe')
driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=s, options=options)
driver.get("https://www.google.com/")
You can find a relevant detailed discussion in How to open a Chrome Profile through Python
The code works fine, it opens the browser with the user profile I want, but the code stops running in a few seconds after the browser opens, so all the code I put below the webdriver doesn't work
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_argument("user-data-dir=C:\\Users\\I\\AppData\\Local\\Google\\Chrome\\User Data") #Path to your chrome profile
options.add_argument('--profile-directory=Profile 2')
w = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path="Chromedrive/chromedriver.exe", options=options)
I am working on a project with selenium to scrape the data, but I don't want the browser to open and pop up. I just wanted to hide the browser and also not to display it in the taskbar also...
Some also suggested to use phantomJS but I didn't get them. What to do now ...
If you're using Chrome you can just set the headless argument like so:
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
driver_exe = 'chromedriver'
options = Options()
options.add_argument("--headless")
driver = webdriver.Chrome(driver_exe, options=options)
For chrome you could pass in the --headless parameter.
Alternatively you could let selenium work on a virtual display like this:
from selenium import webdriver
from xvfbwrapper import Xvfb
display = Xvfb()
display.start()
driver = webdriver.Chrome()
driver.get('http://www.stackoverflow.com')
print(driver.title)
driver.quit()
display.stop()
The latter has worked for me quite well.
To hide the browser while executing tests using Selenium's python you can use the minimize_window() method which eventually minimizes/pushes the Chrome Browsing Context effectively to the background using the following solution:
from selenium import webdriver
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_argument("--start-maximized")
options.add_experimental_option("excludeSwitches", ["enable-automation"])
options.add_experimental_option('useAutomationExtension', False)
driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=options, executable_path=r'C:\Utility\BrowserDrivers\chromedriver.exe')
driver.get('https://www.google.co.in')
driver.minimize_window()
Alternative
As an alternative you can use the headless attribute to configure ChromeDriver to initiate google-chrome browser in Headless mode using Selenium and you can find a couple of relevant discussions in:
How to configure ChromeDriver to initiate Chrome browser in Headless mode through Selenium?
If you're using Firefox, try this:
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.firefox.options import Options
driver_exe = 'path/to/firefoxdriver'
options = Options()
options.add_argument("--headless")
driver = webdriver.Firefox(driver_exe, options=options)
similar to what #Meshi answered in case of Chrome
if you want to hide chrome or selenium driver there is a library pyautogui
import pyautogui
window = [ x for x in pyautogui.getAllWindows()]
by this, you are getting all window title
now you need to find your window
for i in window:
if 'Google Chrome' in i.title:
i.hide()
or you can play with your driver title also
I'm trying to use selenium on OSX to open a chrome window with existing cookies so that I can bypass login. When I don't add the argument 'chrome_options=option' to open chrome with my user settings, the driver.get function works fine and it opens a chrome window with no extensions loaded and browses to the url. But when I use the code as shown below, it simply opens chrome (with all extensions loaded) but does not browse to the URL. Am I missing something simple?
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_argument("user-data-dir=/Users/me/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/")
driver = webdriver.Chrome("./assets/chromedriver",chrome_options=options)
driver.implicitly_wait(30)
driver.maximize_window()
driver.get("https://www.gmail.com/")
How do you go about disabling cache on Chrome using Selenium Webdriver in python?
I did this but when I check in the browser it does not work
chrome_options = Options()
chrome_options.add_argument("--disable-application-cache")
browser = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path = path_to_chromedriver, chrome_options=chrome_options)