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

Question

For MacOS chromedriver upgrade did the trick:

brew upgrade --cask chromedriver

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

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!

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)

I had to reinstall protractor for it to pull the updated webdriver-manager module. Also, per @Mark’s comment, the package-lock.json may be locking the dependency.

npm uninstall protractor
npm install --save-dev protractor

Then, make sure to check the maxChromedriver value in node_modules/protractor/node_modules/webdriver-manager/config.json after re-install to verify it matches the desired Chrome driver version.

Update

I've submitted a pull request to RSelenium adding the ChromeDriver version selection logic proposed in my original answer. Until it gets merged (if at all), you can install it with

remotes::install_github("ropensci/RSelenium#237")

Then you can call rsDriver() with the new chromever = "latest_compatible" option which should always select the right ChromeDriver version:

RSelenium::rsDriver(browser = "chrome",
                    chromever = "latest_compatible")

Original answer

I ran into the same kind of error using RSelenium::rsDriver()'s default chromever = "latest" setting which resulted in the failed attempt to combine chromedriver 75.0.3770.8 with latest google-chrome-stable 74.0.3729.157:

session not created: This version of ChromeDriver only supports Chrome version 75

Since this obviously seems to be a recurring and pretty annoying issue, I have come up with the following workaround to always use the latest compatible ChromeDriver version:

rD <- RSelenium::rsDriver(browser = "chrome",
                          chromever =
                                  system2(command = "google-chrome-stable",
                                          args = "--version",
                                          stdout = TRUE,
                                          stderr = TRUE) %>%
                                  stringr::str_extract(pattern = "(?<=Chrome )\\d+\\.\\d+\\.\\d+\\.") %>%
                                  magrittr::extract(!is.na(.)) %>%
                                  stringr::str_replace_all(pattern = "\\.",
                                                           replacement = "\\\\.") %>%
                                  paste0("^",  .) %>%
                                  stringr::str_subset(string =
                                                              binman::list_versions(appname = "chromedriver") %>%
                                                              dplyr::last()) %>%
                                  as.numeric_version() %>%
                                  max() %>%
                                  as.character())

The above code is only tested under Linux and makes use of some tidyverse packages (install them beforehand or rewrite it in base R). For other operating systems you might have to adapt it a bit, particularly replace command = "google-chrome-stable" with the system-specific command to launch Google Chrome:

• On macOS it should be enough to replace command = "google-chrome-stable" with command = "/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome".

• On Windows a plattform-specific bug prevents us from calling the Google Chrome binary directly to get its version number. Instead do the following:

  rD <- RSelenium::rsDriver(browser = "chrome",
                            chromever =
                              system2(command = "wmic",
                                      args = 'datafile where name="C:\\\\Program Files (x86)\\\\Google\\\\Chrome\\\\Application\\\\chrome.exe" get Version /value',
                                      stdout = TRUE,
                                      stderr = TRUE) %>%
                              stringr::str_extract(pattern = "(?<=Version=)\\d+\\.\\d+\\.\\d+\\.") %>%
                              magrittr::extract(!is.na(.)) %>%
                              stringr::str_replace_all(pattern = "\\.",
                                                       replacement = "\\\\.") %>%
                              paste0("^",  .) %>%
                              stringr::str_subset(string =
                                                          binman::list_versions(appname = "chromedriver") %>%
                                                          dplyr::last()) %>% 
                              as.numeric_version() %>%
                              max() %>%
                              as.character())
  

Basically, the code just ensures the latest ChromeDriver version matching the major-minor-patch version number of the system's stable Google Chrome browser is passed as chromever argument. This procedure should adhere to the official ChromeDriver versioning scheme. Quote:

• ChromeDriver uses the same version number scheme as Chrome (...)
• Each version of ChromeDriver supports Chrome with matching major, minor, and build version numbers. For example, ChromeDriver 73.0.3683.20 supports all Chrome versions that start with 73.0.3683.

I dealed with this issue today and upgrading my webdrivermanger solved it for me (My previous version was 3.0.0):

<dependency>
    <groupId>io.github.bonigarcia</groupId>
    <artifactId>webdrivermanager</artifactId>
    <version>3.3.0</version>
    <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>