[selenium] SessionNotCreatedException: Message: session not created: This version of ChromeDriver only supports Chrome version 81

I am currently new to robot framework.I am currently using latest window version of chrome and chromedriver which is 80 but when i try to run the test it gives the message "SessionNotCreatedException: Message: session not created: This version of ChromeDriver only supports Chrome version 81" in pycharm but currently beta version of 81 is only available. I have tried uninstalling everthing and reinstalling it again but nothing works can anyone help me with this.Thank you!

Screenshots below:

Chrome version is updating everyday so you need use exact chromedriver version according chrome version https://chromedriver.chromium.org/downloads in this website you can download chromedrivers

I got this error when the chrome driver was not closed properly. Eg, if I try to find something and click it and it doesn't exist, the driver throws an exception and the thread ended there ( I did not close the driver ).

So, when I ran the same method again later where I had to reinitialize the driver, the driver didn't initialize and it threw the exception.

My solve was simply to wrap the selenium tasks in a try catch and close the driver properly

It is not python related but for C# or dotnet users you might specify driver version in nuget packages. For instance Selenium.WebDriver.ChromeDriver is a good start point. It should match browser version. In chrome you can check version by accessing

chrome://settings/help

Be informed that it will also affect chrome version on pipeline agents and other developer's computers.

The way I solved this issue was quite simple, I checked my chrome version and I had an older chromedriver in my PATH variable, so I downloaded the chromedriver version that matched my browser and replaced the old one in the PATH, so when the webdriver module looked for a chromedriver in my PATH, it would find the matching version

I had already been running a local server at the same port the session wanted to run on, and this caused the error. Shutting down that local server fixed this for me.

Goto You Chrome setting->About Chorme->Check version and download chromedriver from Below according your chrome Version https://chromedriver.chromium.org/downloads

this works for me

brew cask upgrade chromedriver

It didn't feel like folks were answering the issue here which is: being on the latest version of beta Chrome/Chromium and not seeing the matching chromedriver version

For example, currently as of writing this, Chromium for Mac is Version 86.0.4190.0 (Developer Build) (64-bit) however the latest chromedriver versions listed are

Current stable release: ChromeDriver 83.0.4103.39

Current beta release: ChromeDriver 84.0.4147.30

If you go to https://chromedriver.chromium.org/downloads/version-selection, they provide some pointers on getting a compatible version. One of the last lines near the end mentions trying the ChromeDriver Canary build which leads to how to get it from Chromium browser snapshots.

Of course this goes without saying that using the latest experimental version is likely to have bugs

I too had a similar problem. And I've got a solution .. Download the matching chromedriver, and place the chromedriver under the /usr/local/bin path. It works.

1. First of all check latest Chrome version (This is your browser Chrome version) link

2. Download same version of Chrome Web Driver from this link

Do not download latest Chrome Web Driver if it does not match your Chrome Browser version.

Note: When I write this message, latest Chrome Browser version is 84 but latest Chrome Driver version is 85. I am using Chrome Driver version 84 so that Chrome Driver and Chrome Browser versions are the same.

The case when your Chrome is in the middle of its update also causes this exception. In my case chromedriver was already updated, while the chrome itself was v81 instead of v83.

I got the same message on MacOS:

"selenium.common.exceptions.SessionNotCreatedException: Message: session not created: This version of ChromeDriver only supports Chrome version 81"

Then I run this command, it's gone:

brew cask upgrade chromedriver

The solution (at least on OSX) is:

1. Download the latest chromedriver file.
2. Unzip the downloaded file.
3. Search the location of the old chromedriver file on your computer and replace it with the new chromedriver file.
4. Right-click the chromedriver file and click open. Do not double click as Mac will not open it the proper way.
5. Once the file runs for the first time, you can close it and the update will have taken place.

Your Chrome Driver version needs to match your Chrome Browser version

1. Get you Chrome Browser version, by typing chrome://version

enter image description here

2. Download Chrome Driver version that matches you Chrome Browser version, form this website https://chromedriver.chromium.org/downloads

You need to install webdriver manager. Make sure webdriver manager it is also updated.

If you use npm:

npm install -g webdriver-manager

webdriver-manager update

The solution is:-

• Check out the chrome version of your chrome.From chrome://settings/help
• Check out which version of ChromeDriver is compatible with your current chrome version from here
• download the compatible one and replace the existing ChromeDriver with a new ChromeDriver.
• Now run the code

If you are getting this error when you run stuffs on automated cluster and you are downloading the stable version of the google chrome every time then you can use the below shell script to download the compatible version of the chrome driver dynamically every time even if the stable version of the chrome gets updated.

%sh
#downloading compatible chrome driver version
#getting the current chrome browser version
**chromeVersion=$(google-chrome --product-version)**
#getting the major version value from the full version
**chromeMajorVersion=${chromeVersion%%.*}**
# setting the base url for getting the release url for the chrome driver
**baseDriverLatestReleaseURL=https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/LATEST_RELEASE_**
#creating the latest release driver url based on the major version of the chrome
**latestDriverReleaseURL=$baseDriverLatestReleaseURL$chromeMajorVersion**
**echo $latestDriverReleaseURL**
#file name of the file that gets downloaded which would contain the full version of the chrome driver to download
**latestDriverVersionFileName="LATEST_RELEASE_"$chromeMajorVersion**
#downloading the file that would contain the full release version compatible with the major release of the chrome browser version
**wget $latestDriverReleaseURL** 
#reading the file to get the version of the chrome driver that we should download
**latestFullDriverVersion=$(cat $latestDriverVersionFileName)**
**echo $latestFullDriverVersion**
#creating the final URL by passing the compatible version of the chrome driver that we should download
**finalURL="https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/"$latestFullDriverVersion"/chromedriver_linux64.zip"**
**echo $finalURL**
**wget $finalURL**

I was able to get the compatible version of chrome browser and chrome driver using the above approach when running scheduled job on the databricks environment and it worked like a charm without any issues.

Hope it helps others in one way or other.

You can also download the correct chromedriver version from:

https://chromedriver.chromium.org/downloads https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/index.html?path=81.0.4044.138/

Do below steps :

1. Check the version of chrome browser.

2. download chromedriver of same version from https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/chromedriver/

3. Give correct path in the pycharm and run the code.

I solved these kinds of problems using the webdrive manager.

You can automatically use the correct chromedriver by using the webdrive-manager. Install the webdrive-manager:

pip install webdriver-manager

Then use the driver in python as follows

from selenium import webdriver
from webdriver_manager.chrome import ChromeDriverManager

driver = webdriver.Chrome(ChromeDriverManager().install())

This answer is taken from https://stackoverflow.com/a/52878725/10741023

For mac users, this is the best way to solve, Download the chromedriver and then paste that chromedriver in this directory

/usr/local/bin

If this directory is not found to you then from finder click on go then select computer then press command+shift+. (this shows the hidden files in mac) then definitely you will see these directory easily

Simply Update the Chrome browser to the latest version available.

This error message...

SessionNotCreatedException: Message: session not created: This version of ChromeDriver only supports Chrome version 81

...implies that the ChromeDriver v81 was unable to initiate/spawn a new Browsing Context i.e. Chrome Browser where is version is other then 81.0.

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

• You mentioned about using chromedriver=80 and chrome=80 but somehow while your program execution ChromeDriver v 81.0 is used.

• So, it's quite evident your have chromedriver=81.0 present within your system and is present within the system PATH variable which gets invoked while you:

  driver = webdriver.Chrome()
  

Solution

There are two solutions:

• Either you upgrade chrome to Chrome Version 81.0 level. (as per ChromeDriver v81.0 release notes)

• Or you can override the default chromedriver v81.0 binary location with chromedriver v80.0 binary location as follows:

  from selenium import webdriver
  
  driver = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path=r'C:\path\to\chromedriver.exe')
  driver.get('http://google.com/')
  

Reference

You can find a couple of relevant discussions in:

• How to work with a specific version of ChromeDriver while Chrome Browser gets updated automatically through Python selenium
• selenium.common.exceptions.SessionNotCreatedException: Message: session not created: This version of ChromeDriver only supports Chrome version 80
• Ubuntu: selenium.common.exceptions: session not created: This version of ChromeDriver only supports Chrome version 79

Referring to @dylanvanw answer. You might still out of luck. I found that you might have a different path that you have installed Python. In my case, I have to move Chromedriver.exe from the cache path (C:\Users\Poom.wdm\drivers\chromedriver\win32\84.0.4147.30) to C:\Python38 then it work!

I found a workaround to download latest version of ChromeDriver via WebDriverManager You could try something like,

WebDriver driver = null ;
boolean oldVersion = true;
String chromeVersion = "";
try {
    try{
        FileReader reader = new FileReader("chromeVersion.txt") ;
        BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(reader) ;
        
        String line;
        
        while ((line = br.readLine()) != null){
            chromeVersion = line.trim();
        }
        reader.close();
    } catch (IOException e ) {}
    
    WebDriverManager.chromedriver().version(chromeVersion).setup();
    driver = new ChromeDriver() ;
} catch (Exception e) {
    oldVersion = false;
    String err = e.getMessage() ;
    chromeVersion = err.split("version is")[1].split("with binary path")[0].trim();
    try{
        FileWriter writer = new FileWriter("chromeVersion.txt", true) ;
        writer.write(chromeVersion) ;
        writer.close();
    } catch (IOException er ) {}
}

if (!oldVersion){
    WebDriverManager.chromedriver().version(chromeVersion).setup();
    driver = new ChromeDriver() ;
}

driver.get("https://www.google.com") ;

Steps I took to make it work

1. Check your current Chrome version e.g. 81
2. Goto tools/nuget package manager
3. Select selenium chrome driver
4. upgrade/downgrade to the same Chrome-version you have.

Restarting the application should work.

I faced this problem even after using webdriver manager. I was able to resolve the issue after specifying the exact version of chromedriver that I needed in the webddriver manager.

I was using chrome version 84 and the webdriver manager was installing the latest version of chromedriver, which was 85.0.4183.38.

I made webdriver manager to open the chromedriver version 84.0.4147.30 by writing the following command.

from selenium import webdriver
from webdriver_manager.chrome import ChromeDriverManager

driver = webdriver.Chrome(ChromeDriverManager(84.0.4147.30).install())