How to Work with a Specific Version of Chromedriver While Chrome Browser Gets Updated Automatically Through Python Selenium

How to work with a specific version of ChromeDriver while Chrome Browser gets updated automatically through Python selenium

No, there is no other alternative than updating the ChromeDriver binary versions, while the Chrome Browser keeps on getting updated automatically.

Reason

Each Chrome Browser is released after certain feature additions, modifications and removals from the existing features. To comply with the current set of Browser Features, Chrome Team releases the compatible ChromeDriver binary time to time. These ChromeDriver binaries are capable to interact with the Chrome Browser. Certain version of a ChromeDriver binary supports a specific range of Chrome Browser versions (some of the recent) as below:

ChromeDriver v84.0.4147.30 (2020-05-28)
```
Supports Chrome version 84
```
ChromeDriver v83.0.4103.39 (2020-05-05)
```
Supports Chrome version 83
```
ChromeDriver v82 was intensionally skipped.
ChromeDriver v81.0.4044.138 (2020-05-05)
```
Supports Chrome version 81
```
ChromeDriver v80.0.3987.106 (2020-02-13)
```
Supports Chrome version 80
```
ChromeDriver v79.0.3945.36 (2019-11-18)
```
Supports Chrome version 79
```
ChromeDriver v78.0.3904.70 (2019-10-21)
```
Supports Chrome version 78
```
ChromeDriver v77.0.3865.40 (2019-08-20)
```
Supports Chrome version 77
```
ChromeDriver v76.0.3809.126 (2019-08-20)
```
Supports Chrome version 76
```
ChromeDriver v75.0.3770.8 (2019-04-29)
```
Supports Chrome version 75
```
ChromeDriver v74.0.3729.6 (2019-03-14)
```
Supports Chrome version 74
```
ChromeDriver v73.0.3683.68 (2019-03-06)
```
Supports Chrome version 73
```
ChromeDriver v2.46 (2019-02-01)
```
Supports Chrome v71-73
```
ChromeDriver v2.45 (2018-12-10)
```
Supports Chrome v70-72
```
ChromeDriver v2.44 (2018-11-19)
```
Supports Chrome v69-71
```
ChromeDriver v2.43 (2018-10-16)
```
Supports Chrome v69-71
```
ChromeDriver v2.42 (2018-09-13)
```
Supports Chrome v68-70
```
ChromeDriver v2.41 (2018-07-27)
```
Supports Chrome v67-69
```
ChromeDriver v2.40 (2018-06-07)
```
Supports Chrome v66-68
```
ChromeDriver v2.39 (2018-05-30)
```
Supports Chrome v66-68
```
ChromeDriver v2.38 (2018-04-17)
```
Supports Chrome v65-67
```
ChromeDriver v2.37 (2018-03-16)
```
Supports Chrome v64-66
```
ChromeDriver v2.36 (2018-03-02)
```
Supports Chrome v63-65
```
ChromeDriver v2.35 (2018-01-10)
```
Supports Chrome v62-64
```
ChromeDriver v2.34 (2017-12-10)
```
Supports Chrome v61-63
```
ChromeDriver v2.33 (2017-10-03)
```
Supports Chrome v60-62
```
ChromeDriver v2.32 (2017-08-30)
```
Supports Chrome v59-61
```
ChromeDriver v2.31 (2017-07-21)
```
Supports Chrome v58-60
```
ChromeDriver v2.30 (2017-06-07)
```
Supports Chrome v58-60
```
ChromeDriver v2.29 (2017-04-04)
```
Supports Chrome v56-58
```

Conclusion

To keep your script/program interactive with the updated Chrome Browser you have to keep the version of ChromeDriver binary in sync with the Chrome Browser as per the compatibility.

Automatic download of appropriate chromedriver for Selenium in Python

Here is the other solution, where webdriver_manager does not support. This script will get the latest chrome driver version downloaded.

import requests
import wget
import zipfile
import os

# get the latest chrome driver version number
url = 'https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/LATEST_RELEASE'
response = requests.get(url)
version_number = response.text

# build the donwload url
download_url = "https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/" + version_number +"/chromedriver_win32.zip"

# download the zip file using the url built above
latest_driver_zip = wget.download(download_url,'chromedriver.zip')

# extract the zip file
with zipfile.ZipFile(latest_driver_zip, 'r') as zip_ref:
    zip_ref.extractall() # you can specify the destination folder path here
# delete the zip file downloaded above
os.remove(latest_driver_zip)

How to fix the chromedriver if its not compatible with chrome version?

You can download and use the latest ChromeDriver automatically using webdrivermanager-python.

This can be achieved by installing the webdriver-manager using the command:

pip install webdriver-manager

Implemention through code:

from selenium import webdriver
from webdriver_manager.chrome import ChromeDriverManager

driver = webdriver.Chrome(ChromeDriverManager().install())
driver.get("https://www.google.com/")

How to Work with a Specific Version of Chromedriver While Chrome Browser Gets Updated Automatically Through Python Selenium