Can no longer run RSelenium Chrome Driver

Question

I'll start by saying I have ran into this issue many times in the past, and all that's been required is updating my Google Chrome version and then updating the chromever = param in rsDriver(). These are no longer working for me.

I've tried the solutions in many posts (this one in particular) but I still can't get it to work.

Here are some details:

• Computer/browser/R info:

  • Chrome Version: 89.0.4389.90
  • Mac Version: 10.15.4
  • RStudio Version: 1.3.959

• For the longest time, I've been able to use chromever = "87.0.4280.20" even though my browser wasn't on that version. I could open up a remote driver with remDrall <- rsDriver(port = 4445L, browser = "chrome", chromever = "87.0.4280.20")

• When I try this now, I get an error saying

  Selenium message:session not created: This version of ChromeDriver only supports Chrome version 87
  Current browser version is 89.0.4389.90 with binary path /Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome
  

• This prompted me to try updating my ChromeDriver if it was stuck on 87. I updated it by manually downloading and moving to /usr/local/bin/chromedriver as well as updating via brew upgrade chromedriver. As far as I know it worked, testing via:

  • ls /usr/local/Caskroom/chromedriver/ gives me 89.0.4389.23
  • /usr/local/bin/chromedriver starts a chromedriver session with 89.0.4389.23

• I've tried using chromever = "89.0.4389.23" but I get an unknown server-side error. I know my chrome version is 89.0.4389.90, but that version isn't available to use in rsDriver.

I'm really not sure where to go from here. I just don't get why it says my ChromeDriver only supports Chrome version 87 when I clearly have it updated to 89. Could it be that my rsDriver function is still picking up some old version of ChromeDriver? Can I direct it specifically to the one in /usr/local/bin/?

Any thoughts on what I can try next?

Answer 1

Try to replace the chromedriver.exe file on you local directory with the updated version from here:

https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/index.html?path=89.0.4389.23/

Answer 2

Same problem here, and it drove me crazy!

I tried to figure out where Rselenium or Binman found the old versions of chromedriver. binman::appdir('chromeriver) shows the chromedriver Rselenium uses is the path ~/Library/Application Support/binman_chromedriver. Then I manually copied the compatible version of chromedriver there. Finally, I got a different error:

checking Selenium Server versions:
BEGIN: PREDOWNLOAD
BEGIN: DOWNLOAD
BEGIN: POSTDOWNLOAD
checking chromedriver versions:
BEGIN: PREDOWNLOAD
BEGIN: DOWNLOAD
BEGIN: POSTDOWNLOAD
checking geckodriver versions:
BEGIN: PREDOWNLOAD
BEGIN: DOWNLOAD
BEGIN: POSTDOWNLOAD
checking phantomjs versions:
BEGIN: PREDOWNLOAD
BEGIN: DOWNLOAD
BEGIN: POSTDOWNLOAD
[1] "Connecting to remote server"
Could not open chrome browser.
Client error message:
Undefined error in httr call. httr output: Failed to connect to localhost port 4567 after 0 ms: Couldn't connect to server
Check server log for further details.

The error was solved by setting chromever=NULL in rsDriver() according to This answer. I finally got it to work!

Answer 3

I ran into a similar problem last week and was able to get the command working again by making the following change to the chromever option:

Previous version that has stopped working:

rsDriver(chromever = "87.0.4280.88", browser = "chrome", extraCapabilities = eCaps)

New version that works:

rsDriver(chromever = "89.0.4389.23", browser = "chrome", extraCapabilities = eCaps)