How can I get chrome version using python code without having to actually open up a browser?

Question

I'm writing a bunch of programs using python selenium. In order to scrape content from different websites, I need to download chromedriver.exe that is compatible with my current version of chrome. However, chrome is constantly being updated, so I want to write a program that will first check if chrome and chromedriver versions are compatible before running my programs. So, I need a way to get my current chrome version without using chromewebdriver or actually opening up a browser. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

For windows you could try with the CMD reg query "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Google Chrome" as follow:

import os
stream = os.popen('reg query "HKLM\\SOFTWARE\\Wow6432Node\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Uninstall\\Google Chrome"')
output = stream.read()
print(output)

To extract the google_version from the output you could try the following:

import os


def extract_version(output):
    try:
        google_version = ''
        for letter in output[output.rindex('DisplayVersion    REG_SZ') + 24:]:
            if letter != '\n':
                google_version += letter
            else:
                break
        return(google_version.strip())
    except TypeError:
        return


stream = os.popen('reg query "HKLM\\SOFTWARE\\Wow6432Node\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Uninstall\\Google Chrome"')
output = stream.read()
google_version = extract_version(output)
print(google_version)

Answer 2

If you are working on Linux: Try this in terminal(If you want to get the result in python script, you need to use subprocess.popen()):

google-chrome --version

---

You may need to use which google-chrome to know whether you have install it.Hope it would help.

Answer 3

The new answer to this if you are using Selenium 4.6+ is you don't have to do anything. Selenium now ships with DriverManager that takes care of driver download/install/setup for you. All you need in your script is

driver = webdriver.Chrome()
driver.maximize_window()
driver.get(url)

No other setup, no paths to the binary needed, etc.

Answer 4

It's quite late but I have the solution for you. In Jupyter Notebook, you can do the following commands:

# install google chrome
!wget https://dl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub
!sudo apt-key add linux_signing_key.pub
!echo 'deb [arch=amd64] http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list
!sudo apt-get -y update
!sudo apt-get install -y google-chrome-stable

# install chromedriver
# !apt-get install -y qq unzip
!wget -O /tmp/chromedriver.zip http://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/`curl -sS chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/LATEST_RELEASE`/chromedriver_linux64.zip
!unzip /tmp/chromedriver.zip chromedriver -d /usr/local/bin/

# To check Google Chrome's version
!google-chrome --version
# To check Chrome Driver's version
!chromedriver -v

# Scrap example
import time
from selenium import webdriver
# URL Stock Data
url = "<your url here>"

chrome_options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
chrome_options.add_argument('--no-sandbox')
chrome_options.add_argument('--headless')
chrome_options.add_argument('--disable-gpu')
chrome_options.add_argument('--disable-dev-shm-usage')
chrome_options.add_argument("--window-size=1920,2160")
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=chrome_options)

# head to login page
driver.get(url)
# find username field and send the username itself to the input field
driver.find_element("id", "userNameId").send_keys(mom_username)
# find password input field and insert password as well
driver.find_element("id", "passwordId").send_keys(mom_password)
# click login button
driver.find_element("id", "loginButtonId").click()

data = driver.page_source
data
time.sleep(10)