WebDriverException: unknown error: cannot find Chrome binary error with Selenium in Python for older versions of Google Chrome

Question

For compatibility reasons I prefer to use Chrome version 55.0.2883.75 with Chromedriver v. 2.26. I downloaded the older version of chrome from https://www.slimjet.com/chrome/google-chrome-old-version.php and Chromedriver 2.26 from https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/index.html?path=2.26/.

I am using the following code to attempt to set my Chrome binary location:

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options

options = Options()
options.binary_location = "C:\\Program Files\\Chrome\\chrome64_55.0.2883.75\\chrome.exe"
driver = webdriver.Chrome('chromedriver.exe', chrome_options = options)

However, when I attempt to launch the WebDriver Python returns the following error:

WebDriverException: unknown error: cannot find Chrome binary
(Driver info: chromedriver=2.26.436362
(5476ec6bf7ccbada1734a0cdec7d570bb042aa30),platform=Windows NT 10.0.14393 x86_64)

I have tried searching through similar questions and answers but have not had any luck so far. Any help is greatly appreciated - thank you in advance!

Answer 1

This error message...

WebDriverException: unknown error: cannot find Chrome binary

...implies that the ChromeDriver was unable to find the Chrome binary in the default location for your system.

As per the ChromeDriver - Requirements:

The server expects you to have Chrome installed in the default location for each system:

OS	Expected Location of Chrome
Linux	/usr/bin/google-chrome1
Mac	/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome
Windows XP	%HOMEPATH%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe
Windows Vista and newer	C:\Users%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe

¹ For Linux systems, the ChromeDriver expects /usr/bin/google-chrome to be a symlink to the actual Chrome binary.

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Using a Chrome executable in a non-standard location

However you can also override the default Chrome binary location as follows:

To use Chrome version 55.x installed in non standard location through ChromeDriver v2.26 you can use the following code:

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options

options = Options()
options.binary_location = "C:\\Program Files\\Chrome\\chrome64_55.0.2883.75\\chrome.exe"
driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options = options, executable_path=r'C:\path\to\chromedriver.exe')
driver.get('http://google.com/')
print("Chrome Browser Invoked")
driver.quit()

Related Docs

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Reference

You can find a detailed discussion in:

• Is Chrome installation needed or only chromedriver when using Selenium?

Answer 2

What happened to me is that I didn't have chrome, the main browser, installed. Download the browser and it fixes this issue.

Answer 3

Using an old version of chrome driver with the latest Google Chrome locally gave me the same exception.

Just go to the ChromeDriver page and make sure you have the latest version.