I am trying to execute a basic program using Selenium 4.8.0 Python clients in headless mode:
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service
options = Options()
options.headless = True
s = Service('C:\\BrowserDrivers\\chromedriver.exe')
driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=s, options=options)
driver.get('https://www.google.com/')
driver.quit()
With the following configuration:
Selenium 4.8.0 Python
Chrome _Version 109.0.5414.120 (Official Build) (64-bit)
ChromeDriver 109.0.5414.25
Though the program gets executed successfully there seems to a DeprecationWarning as:
DeprecationWarning: headless property is deprecated, instead use add_argument('--headless') or add_argument('--headless=new')
Can anyone explain the DeprecationWarning and the required changes?
The deprecation of the headless property was announced in the Selenium Blog post Headless is Going Away! (archive) on January 29, 2023. The summary and suggested changes are as follows:
Headless is Going Away!
Headless is an execution mode for Firefox and Chromium based browsers. It allows users to run automated scripts in headless mode, meaning that the browser window wouldn’t be visible. In most of Selenium’s bindings there is a convenience method to set this execution mode while setting the browser options. However, Selenium 4.8.0 will be deprecated [sic] this method and now users need to set it through arguments when setting the browser options.
[...]
How can I set headless mode from now on?
In short, users can add the headless mode they want to use through arguments in browser options.
Before
options = ChromeOptions()
options.headless = True
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options)
driver.get('http://selenium.dev')
driver.quit()
After
options = ChromeOptions()
options.add_argument("--headless=new")
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options)
driver.get('http://selenium.dev')
driver.quit()
See the full blog post for additional background on why this change was implemented.
Test Automation developers had been using Headless Chrome and Firefox Headless for quite sometime now to execute the automated scripts in headless mode where the browser window wouldn't be visible. This was the traditional headless mode which now turns the old Headless mode.
The snippets being used were:
Java:
ChromeOptions options = new ChromeOptions();
options.setHeadless(true);
WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(options);
driver.get("https://selenium.dev");
driver.quit();
Python:
options = ChromeOptions()
options.headless = True
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options)
driver.get('http://selenium.dev')
driver.quit()
Javascript:
let driver = await env
.builder()
.setChromeOptions(new chrome.Options().headless())
.build();
await driver.get('https://selenium.dev');
await driver.quit();
According to this Selenium Blog this old headless mode will be still available by using the --headless switch with no value or with old value. This convenient yet deprecated method will be removed in Selenium 4.10.0
Renaming NativeHeadlessChrome to new Headless
Recently Chromium team have released the Native Headless mode which is now officially called the new Headless mode. This functionality have landed with:
Chromium v109.0.5400.0
ChromeDriver v109.0.5414.25
aptly supported through:
Selenium v4.8.0
The new syntax requires --headless=new to be passed as an argument, where as we passed only --headless while using Chrome since v96 till v108.
Sample Code snippets:
Java:
ChromeOptions options = new ChromeOptions();
options.addArguments("--headless=new");
WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(options);
driver.get("https://selenium.dev);
driver.quit();
Python:
options = ChromeOptions()
options.add_argument("--headless=new")
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options)
driver.get('http://selenium.dev')
driver.quit()
Javascript:
let driver = await env
.builder()
.setChromeOptions(options.addArguments('--headless=new'))
.build();
await driver.get('https://selenium.dev');
await driver.quit();
CSharp:
var options = new ChromeOptions();
options.AddArgument("--headless=new");
var driver = new ChromeDriver(options);
driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://selenium.dev");
driver.Quit();
Ruby:
options = Selenium::WebDriver::Options.chrome(args: ['--headless=new'])
driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :chrome, options: options
driver.get('https://selenium.dev')
driver.quit
I'm trying to initiate a tor browsing session through Tor Browser 9.5 which uses the default Firefox v68.9.0esr using GeckoDriver and Selenium through Python on a windows-10 system. But I'm facing an error as:
Code Block:
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.firefox.firefox_profile import FirefoxProfile
import os
torexe = os.popen(r'C:\Users\username\Desktop\Tor Browser\Browser\TorBrowser\Tor\tor.exe')
profile = FirefoxProfile(r'C:\Users\username\Desktop\Tor Browser\Browser\TorBrowser\Data\Browser\profile.default')
profile.set_preference('network.proxy.type', 1)
profile.set_preference('network.proxy.socks', '127.0.0.1')
profile.set_preference('network.proxy.socks_port', 9050)
profile.set_preference("network.proxy.socks_remote_dns", False)
profile.update_preferences()
firefox_options = webdriver.FirefoxOptions()
firefox_options.binary_location = r'C:\Users\username\Desktop\Tor Browser\Browser\firefox.exe'
driver = webdriver.Firefox(firefox_profile= profile, options = firefox_options, executable_path=r'C:\WebDrivers\geckodriver.exe')
driver.get("https://www.tiktok.com/")
Where as the same code block works through Firefox and Firefox Nightly using the respective binaries.
Do I need any additional settings? Can someone help me out?
Firefox Snapshot:
Firefox Nightly Snapshot:
I managed to resolve this by updating to v9.5.1 and implementing the following changes:
Note that although the code is in C# the same changes to the Tor browser and how it is launched should be applied.
FirefoxProfile profile = new FirefoxProfile(profilePath);
profile.SetPreference("network.proxy.type", 1);
profile.SetPreference("network.proxy.socks", "127.0.0.1");
profile.SetPreference("network.proxy.socks_port", 9153);
profile.SetPreference("network.proxy.socks_remote_dns", false);
FirefoxDriverService firefoxDriverService = FirefoxDriverService.CreateDefaultService(geckoDriverDirectory);
firefoxDriverService.FirefoxBinaryPath = torPath;
firefoxDriverService.BrowserCommunicationPort = 2828;
var firefoxOptions = new FirefoxOptions
{
Profile = null,
LogLevel = FirefoxDriverLogLevel.Trace
};
firefoxOptions.AddArguments("-profile", profilePath);
FirefoxDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver(firefoxDriverService, firefoxOptions);
driver.Navigate().GoToUrl("https://www.google.com");
Important notes:
The following TOR configs need to be changed in about:config :
marionette.enabled: true
marionette.port: set to an unused port, and set this value to firefoxDriverService.BrowserCommunicationPort in your code. This was set to 2828 in my example.
note:
I am not sure whether this really is the definite answer (thus, I'd really appreciate feedback)
solution:
I've managed to send a get request to the check tor page (https://check.torproject.org/) and it displayed an unknown IP to me (additionally, IPs differ if you repeat the request after a time)
Essentially, I've set up the chrome driver to run TOR. Here's the code:
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
tor_proxy = "127.0.0.1:9150"
chrome_options = Options()
chrome_options.add_argument("--test-type")
chrome_options.add_argument('--ignore-certificate-errors')
chrome_options.add_argument('--disable-extensions')
chrome_options.add_argument('disable-infobars')
chrome_options.add_argument("--incognito")
chrome_options.add_argument('--proxy-server=socks5://%s' % tor_proxy)
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=chrome_options)
driver.get('https://check.torproject.org/')
Because the driver is not in headless mode you can inspect the resulting page yourself. It should read:
"Congratulations. This browser is configured to use Tor. [IP Info]. However, it does not appear to be Tor Browser. Click here to go to the download page"
Make sure that the chromedriver.exe file is linked on the path or provide the path to the file as an argument to the driver.Chrome() function.
Edit: make sure TOR browser is running in the background, thanks #Abhishek Rai for pointing that out
There's a lot on this topic. However, I have found nothing workable so far that involves using what is said in the title above and configurations listed below.
Here is what I am attempting to do: go to this webpage and click on the csv document icon for download (via xpath or css selectors). Either icon is fine - they download the same content.
The sourcecode below outlines what I have done so far. This script runs with no issues, but no document is downloaded - how do I possibly resolve this issue?
Note the following parameters for OS, Python, ChromeDriver, and Chrome configurations:
macOS Mojave v.10.14.6, Python v.3.7.3, ChromeDriver v.770386540, Chrome v.770386540
from selenium import webdriver
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
prefs = {"download.default_directory": "SOME_PATH"}
options.add_experimental_option("prefs", prefs)
options.binary_location = 'PATH_TO_CHROME'
options.add_argument('headless')
# set the window size
options.add_argument('window-size=1200x600')
# initialize the driver
driver = webdriver.Chrome('PATH_TO_CHROME_DRIVER',
options=options)
page_url = 'http://webapps.rrc.texas.gov/eds/eds_searchUic.xhtml'
button = '//*[#id="SearchUicForm:searchTable_paginator_top"]/a[7]'
driver.get(page_url)
# wait up to 10 seconds for the elements to become available
driver.implicitly_wait(5)
driver.find_element_by_xpath(button).click()
You can comment this line of code options.add_argument('headless') and see what is happening in browser. It basically clicks the cvs icon and a download window pop up in browser so we need to handle this pop up window in order to download. We can add chrome options to prevent this.
options = Options()
options.add_experimental_option("prefs", {
"download.default_directory": r"C:\Users\xxx\downloads\Test",
"download.prompt_for_download": False,
"download.directory_upgrade": True,
"safebrowsing.enabled": True
})
driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=options)
While working with selenium webdriver, I want to set download location to a particular location and work with the headless browser. But I am unable to do both at once. Upon going headless, download location changes back.
Here is the piece of my code:
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_experimental_option("prefs",{
"download.default_directory":os.getcwd()+"\mydir",
"download.prompt_for_download":False,
"download.directory_upgrade": True
})
options.add_argument('--headless')
driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=options)
Unfortunately, chromedriver does not currently support headless downloads.
I'm working on a python script to web-scrape and have gone down the path of using Chromedriver as one of the packages. I would like this to operate in the background without any pop-up windows. I'm using the option 'headless' on chromedriver and it seems to do the job in terms of not showing the browser window, however, I still see the .exe file running. See the screenshot of what I'm talking about. Screenshot
This is the code I am using to initiate ChromeDriver:
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_experimental_option("excludeSwitches",["ignore-certificate-errors"])
options.add_argument('headless')
options.add_argument('window-size=0x0')
chrome_driver_path = "C:\Python27\Scripts\chromedriver.exe"
Things I've tried to do is alter the window size in the options to 0x0 but I'm not sure that did anything as the .exe file still popped up.
Any ideas of how I can do this?
I am using Python 2.7 FYI
It should look like this:
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
options = Options()
options.add_argument('--headless')
options.add_argument('--disable-gpu') # Last I checked this was necessary.
driver = webdriver.Chrome(CHROMEDRIVER_PATH, chrome_options=options)
This works for me using Python 3.6, I'm sure it'll work for 2.7 too.
Update 2018-10-26: These days you can just do this:
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
options = Options()
options.headless = True
driver = webdriver.Chrome(CHROMEDRIVER_PATH, options=options)
Answer update of 13-October-2018
To initiate a google-chrome-headless browsing context using Selenium driven ChromeDriver now you can just set the --headless property to true through an instance of Options() class as follows:
Effective code block:
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
options = Options()
options.headless = True
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options, executable_path=r'C:\path\to\chromedriver.exe')
driver.get("http://google.com/")
print ("Headless Chrome Initialized")
driver.quit()
Answer update of 23-April-2018
Invoking google-chrome in headless mode programmatically have become much easier with the availability of the method set_headless(headless=True) as follows :
Documentation :
set_headless(headless=True)
Sets the headless argument
Args:
headless: boolean value indicating to set the headless option
Sample Code :
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
options = Options()
options.set_headless(headless=True)
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options, executable_path=r'C:\path\to\chromedriver.exe')
driver.get("http://google.com/")
print ("Headless Chrome Initialized")
driver.quit()
Note : --disable-gpu argument is implemented internally.
Original Answer of Mar 30 '2018
While working with Selenium Client 3.11.x, ChromeDriver v2.38 and Google Chrome v65.0.3325.181 in Headless mode you have to consider the following points :
You need to add the argument --headless to invoke Chrome in headless mode.
For Windows OS systems you need to add the argument --disable-gpu
As per Headless: make --disable-gpu flag unnecessary --disable-gpu flag is not required on Linux Systems and MacOS.
As per SwiftShader fails an assert on Windows in headless mode --disable-gpu flag will become unnecessary on Windows Systems too.
Argument start-maximized is required for a maximized Viewport.
Here is the link to details about Viewport.
You may require to add the argument --no-sandbox to bypass the OS security model.
Effective windows code block :
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
options = Options()
options.add_argument("--headless") # Runs Chrome in headless mode.
options.add_argument('--no-sandbox') # Bypass OS security model
options.add_argument('--disable-gpu') # applicable to windows os only
options.add_argument('start-maximized') #
options.add_argument('disable-infobars')
options.add_argument("--disable-extensions")
driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=options, executable_path=r'C:\path\to\chromedriver.exe')
driver.get("http://google.com/")
print ("Headless Chrome Initialized on Windows OS")
Effective linux code block :
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
options = Options()
options.add_argument("--headless") # Runs Chrome in headless mode.
options.add_argument('--no-sandbox') # # Bypass OS security model
options.add_argument('start-maximized')
options.add_argument('disable-infobars')
options.add_argument("--disable-extensions")
driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=options, executable_path='/path/to/chromedriver')
driver.get("http://google.com/")
print ("Headless Chrome Initialized on Linux OS")
Steps through YouTube Video
How to initialize Chrome Browser in Maximized Mode through Selenium
Outro
How to make firefox headless programmatically in Selenium with python?
tl; dr
Here is the link to the Sandbox story.
Update August 20, 2020 -- Now is simple!
chrome_options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
chrome_options.headless = True
self.driver = webdriver.Chrome(
executable_path=DRIVER_PATH, chrome_options=chrome_options)
UPDATED
It works fine in my case:
from selenium import webdriver
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.headless = True
driver = webdriver.Chrome(CHROMEDRIVER_PATH, options=options)
Just changed in 2020. Works fine for me.
So after correcting my code to:
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_experimental_option("excludeSwitches",["ignore-certificate-errors"])
options.add_argument('--disable-gpu')
options.add_argument('--headless')
chrome_driver_path = "C:\Python27\Scripts\chromedriver.exe"
The .exe file still came up when running the script. Although this did get rid of some extra output telling me "Failed to launch GPU process".
What ended up working is running my Python script using a .bat file
So basically,
Save python script if a folder
Open text editor, and dump the following code (edit to your script of course)
c:\python27\python.exe c:\SampleFolder\ThisIsMyScript.py %*
Save the .txt file and change the extension to .bat
Double click this to run the file
So this just opened the script in Command Prompt and ChromeDriver seems to be operating within this window without popping out to the front of my screen and thus solving the problem.
The .exe would be running anyway. According to Google - "Run in headless mode, i.e., without a UI or display server dependencies."
Better prepend 2 dashes to command line arguments, i.e. options.add_argument('--headless')
In headless mode, it is also suggested to disable the GPU, i.e. options.add_argument('--disable-gpu')
Try using ChromeDriverManager
from selenium import webdriver
from webdriver_manager.chrome import ChromeDriverManager
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
chrome_options = Options()
chrome_options.set_headless()
browser =webdriver.Chrome(ChromeDriverManager().install(),chrome_options=chrome_options)
browser.get('https://google.com')
# capture the screen
browser.get_screenshot_as_file("capture.png")
Solutions above don't work with websites with cloudflare protection, example: https://paxful.com/fr/buy-bitcoin.
Modify agent as follows:
options.add_argument("user-agent=Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/84.0.4147.125 Safari/537.36")
Fix found here:
What is the difference in accessing Cloudflare website using ChromeDriver/Chrome in normal/headless mode through Selenium Python
from chromedriver_py import binary_path
chrome_options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
chrome_options.add_argument('--headless')
chrome_options.add_argument('--no-sandbox')
chrome_options.add_argument('--disable-gpu')
chrome_options.add_argument('--window-size=1280x1696')
chrome_options.add_argument('--user-data-dir=/tmp/user-data')
chrome_options.add_argument('--hide-scrollbars')
chrome_options.add_argument('--enable-logging')
chrome_options.add_argument('--log-level=0')
chrome_options.add_argument('--v=99')
chrome_options.add_argument('--single-process')
chrome_options.add_argument('--data-path=/tmp/data-path')
chrome_options.add_argument('--ignore-certificate-errors')
chrome_options.add_argument('--homedir=/tmp')
chrome_options.add_argument('--disk-cache-dir=/tmp/cache-dir')
chrome_options.add_argument('user-agent=Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/61.0.3163.100 Safari/537.36')
driver = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path = binary_path,options=chrome_options)
System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver",
"D:\\Lib\\chrome_driver_latest\\chromedriver_win32\\chromedriver.exe");
ChromeOptions chromeOptions = new ChromeOptions();
chromeOptions.addArguments("--allow-running-insecure-content");
chromeOptions.addArguments("--window-size=1920x1080");
chromeOptions.addArguments("--disable-gpu");
chromeOptions.setHeadless(true);
ChromeDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(chromeOptions);
chromeoptions=add_argument("--no-sandbox");
add_argument("--ignore-certificate-errors");
add_argument("--disable-dev-shm-usage'")
is not a supported browser
solution:
Open Browser ${event_url} ${BROWSER} options=add_argument("--no-sandbox"); add_argument("--ignore-certificate-errors"); add_argument("--disable-dev-shm-usage'")
don't forget to add spaces between ${BROWSER} options
There is an option to hide the chromeDriver.exe window in alpha and beta versions of Selenium 4.
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service as ChromeService # Similar thing for firefox also!
from subprocess import CREATE_NO_WINDOW # This flag will only be available in windows
chrome_service = ChromeService('chromedriver', creationflags=CREATE_NO_WINDOW)
driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=chrome_service) # No longer console window opened, niether will chromedriver output
You can check it out from here. To pip install beta or alpha versions, you can do "pip install selenium==4.0.0.a7" or "pip install selenium==4.0.0.b4" (a7 means alpha-7 and b4 means beta-4 so for other versions you want, you can modify the command.) To import a specific version of a library in python you can look here.
RECENT UPDATE
Recently there is an update performed on headless mode of Chrome. The flag --headless is now modified and can be used as below
For Chrome version 109 and above, --headless=new flag allows us to explore full functionality Chrome browser in headless mode.
For Chrome version 108 and below (till Version 96), --headless=chrome option will provide us the headless chrome browser.
So, let's add
options.add_argument("--headless=new")
for newer version of Chrome in headless mode as mentioned above.
The below works fine for me with Chrome version 110.0.5481.104
chrome_driver_path = r"E:\driver\chromedriver.exe"
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_argument('--disable-gpu')
//New Update
options.add_argument("--headless=new")
options.binary_location = r"C:\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe"
browser = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_driver_path, options=options)
browser.get('https://www.google.com')
Update August 2021:
The fastest way to do is probably:
from selenium import webdriver
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.set_headless = True
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options)
options.headless = True is deprecated.