Install browser drivers

Through WebDriver, Selenium supports all major browsers on the market such as Chrome/Chromium, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Edge, and Safari. Where possible, WebDriver drives the browser using the browser’s built-in support for automation.

Since all the driver implementations except for Internet Explorer are provided by the browser vendors themselves, they are not included in the standard Selenium distribution. This section explains the basic requirements for getting started with the different browsers.

Read about more advanced options for starting a driver in our driver configuration documentation.

Four Ways to Use Drivers

1. Selenium Manager (Beta)

Selenium v4.6

Selenium Manager helps you to get a working environment to run Selenium out of the box. Beta 1 of Selenium Manager will configure the drivers for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge if they are not found on the PATH. No extra configuration is needed. Future releases of Selenium Manager will eventually even download browsers if necessary.

Read more at the blog announcement for Selenium Manager .

2. Driver Management Software

Most machines automatically update the browser, but the driver does not. To make sure you get the correct driver for your browser, there are many third party libraries to assist you.

• Java
• Python
• CSharp
• Ruby
• JavaScript
• Kotlin

import io.github.bonigarcia.wdm.WebDriverManager;

        WebDriverManager.chromedriver().setup();

        WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();

from webdriver_manager.chrome import ChromeDriverManager

    service = ChromeService(executable_path=ChromeDriverManager().install())

    driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=service)

using WebDriverManager;
using WebDriverManager.DriverConfigs.Impl;

            new DriverManager().SetUpDriver(new ChromeConfig());

            var driver = new ChromeDriver();

gem 'webdrivers', '~> 5.0'

    require 'webdrivers'

    @driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :chrome

import io.github.bonigarcia.wdm.WebDriverManager;

        WebDriverManager.chromedriver().setup()
        val driver: WebDriver = ChromeDriver()

3. The PATH Environment Variable

This option first requires manually downloading the driver (See Quick Reference Section for links).

This is a flexible option to change location of drivers without having to update your code, and will work on multiple machines without requiring that each machine put the drivers in the same place.

You can either place the drivers in a directory that is already listed in PATH, or you can place them in a directory and add it to PATH.

• Bash
• Zsh
• Windows

echo $PATH

echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/driver' >> ~/.bash_profile
source ~/.bash_profile

chromedriver

echo $PATH

echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/driver' >> ~/.zshenv
source ~/.zshenv

chromedriver

echo %PATH%

setx PATH "%PATH%;C:\WebDriver\bin"

chromedriver.exe

If your PATH is configured correctly above, you will see some output relating to the startup of the driver:

Starting ChromeDriver 95.0.4638.54 (d31a821ec901f68d0d34ccdbaea45b4c86ce543e-refs/branch-heads/4638@{#871}) on port 9515
Only local connections are allowed.
Please see https://chromedriver.chromium.org/security-considerations for suggestions on keeping ChromeDriver safe.
ChromeDriver was started successfully.

You can regain control of your command prompt by pressing Ctrl+C

4. Hard Coded Location

Similar to Option 3 above, you need to manually download the driver (See Quick Reference Section for links). Specifying the location in the code itself has the advantage of not needing to figure out Environment Variables on your system, but has the drawback of making the code much less flexible.

• Java
• Python
• CSharp
• Ruby
• JavaScript
• Kotlin

System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver","/path/to/chromedriver");
ChromeDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();

from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service
from selenium import webdriver

service = Service(executable_path="/path/to/chromedriver")
driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=service)

var driver = new ChromeDriver(@"C:\WebDriver\bin");

service = Selenium::WebDriver::Service.chrome(path: '/path/to/chromedriver')
driver = Selenium::WebDriver.for :chrome, service: service

const {Builder} = require('selenium-webdriver');
const chrome = require('selenium-webdriver/chrome');

const service = new chrome.ServiceBuilder('/path/to/chromedriver');
const driver = new Builder().forBrowser('chrome').setChromeService(service).build();

import org.openqa.selenium.chrome.ChromeDriver

fun main(args: Array<String>) {
    System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver", "/path/to/chromedriver")
    val driver = ChromeDriver()
}

Quick Reference

Note: The Opera driver no longer works with the latest functionality of Selenium and is currently officially unsupported.

Next Step

Create your first Selenium script