How to configure ChromeDriver to initiate Chrome browser in Headless mode through Selenium

Question

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

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System setProperty  quot webdriver chrome driver quot             quot D   Lib  chrome driver latest  chromedriver win32  chromedriver exe quot    ChromeOptions chromeOptions   new ChromeOptions    chromeOptions addArguments  quot --allow-running-insecure-content quot    chromeOptions addArguments  quot --window-size 1920x1080 quot    chromeOptions addArguments  quot --disable-gpu quot     chromeOptions setHeadless true   ChromeDriver driver   new ChromeDriver chromeOptions

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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

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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  quot http   google com  quot   print   quot Headless Chrome Initialized quot   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  quot http   google com  quot   print   quot Headless Chrome Initialized quot   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  quot --headless quot     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  quot --disable-extensions quot   driver   webdriver Chrome chrome options options  executable path r C  path to chromedriver exe   driver get  quot http   google com  quot   print   quot Headless Chrome Initialized on Windows OS quot     Effective linux code block   from selenium import webdriver from selenium webdriver chrome options import Options  options   Options   options add argument  quot --headless quot     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  quot --disable-extensions quot   driver   webdriver Chrome chrome options options  executable path   path to chromedriver   driver get  quot http   google com  quot   print   quot Headless Chrome Initialized on Linux OS quot       Outro How to make firefox headless programmatically in Selenium with python   tl  dr Here is the link to the Sandbox story

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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

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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  chrome options options

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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

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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

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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

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chromeoptions add argument  quot --no-sandbox quot    add argument  quot --ignore-certificate-errors quot    add argument  quot --disable-dev-shm-usage  quot    is not a supported browser solution  Open Browser      event url       BROWSER    options add argument  quot --no-sandbox quot    add argument  quot --ignore-certificate-errors quot    add argument  quot --disable-dev-shm-usage  quot    don t forget to add spaces between   BROWSER    options

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Update August 20  2020 -- Now is simple  from selenium webdriver support ui import WebDriverWait  chrome options   webdriver ChromeOptions   chrome options headless   True  self driver   webdriver Chrome              executable path DRIVER PATH  chrome options chrome options

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Solutions above don t work with websites with cloudflare protection  example  https   paxful com fr buy-bitcoin  Modify agent as follows  options add argument  quot 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 quot   Fix found here  What is the difference in accessing Cloudflare website using ChromeDriver Chrome in normal headless mode through Selenium Python

[python] How to configure ChromeDriver to initiate Chrome browser in Headless mode through Selenium?

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