'WebDriverException: unknown error: cannot find Chrome binary error with Selenium in Python for older versions of Google Chrome
For compatibility reasons I prefer to use Chrome version 55.0.2883.75 with Chromedriver v. 2.26. I downloaded the older version of chrome from https://www.slimjet.com/chrome/google-chrome-old-version.php and Chromedriver 2.26 from https://chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com/index.html?path=2.26/.
I am using the following code to attempt to set my Chrome binary location:
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
options = Options()
options.binary_location = "C:\\Program Files\\Chrome\\chrome64_55.0.2883.75\\chrome.exe"
driver = webdriver.Chrome('chromedriver.exe', chrome_options = options)
However, when I attempt to launch the WebDriver Python returns the following error:
WebDriverException: unknown error: cannot find Chrome binary
(Driver info: chromedriver=2.26.436362
(5476ec6bf7ccbada1734a0cdec7d570bb042aa30),platform=Windows NT 10.0.14393 x86_64)
I have tried searching through similar questions and answers but have not had any luck so far. Any help is greatly appreciated - thank you in advance!
Solution 1:[1]
This error message...
WebDriverException: unknown error: cannot find Chrome binary
...implies that the ChromeDriver was unable to find the Chrome binary in the default location for your system.
As per the ChromeDriver - Requirements:
The ChromeDriver server expects you to have Chrome installed in the default location for each system as follows:
1 For Linux systems, the ChromeDriver expects /usr/bin/google-chrome to be a symlink to the actual Chrome binary.
Using a Chrome executable in a non-standard location
However you can also override the default Chrome binary location as follows:
To use Chrome version 55.x installed in non standard location through ChromeDriver v2.26 you can use the following code block :
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
options = Options()
options.binary_location = "C:\\Program Files\\Chrome\\chrome64_55.0.2883.75\\chrome.exe"
driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options = options, executable_path=r'C:\path\to\chromedriver.exe')
driver.get('http://google.com/')
print("Chrome Browser Invoked")
driver.quit()
Reference
You can find a detailed discussion in:
Solution 2:[2]
What happened to me is that I didn't have chrome, the main browser, installed. Download the browser and it fixes this issue.
Solution 3:[3]
I faced similar issue in MacOS. Even after setting binary path in chromeoptions, it didn't work. It got fixed after installing npm i chromedriver
Solution 4:[4]
Using an old version of chrome driver with the latest Google Chrome locally gave me the same exception.
Just go to the ChromeDriver page and make sure you have the latest version.
Solution 5:[5]
Check https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/chromedriver/getting-started You can specify the binary path in the constructor of the webdriver:
driver = webdriver.Chrome('/path/to/chromedriver') # Optional argument, if not specified will search path.
Solution 6:[6]
I did this to solve my problem
private WebDriver driver;
@Before
public void StartBrowser() {
System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver", "C://opt//WebDriver//bin//chromedriver.exe");
driver = new ChromeDriver();
driver.get("https://www.saucedemo.com/");}
Solution 7:[7]
I have solved this problem by installing Google Chrome link and it solved problem automatically (I use Kali Linux) and be sure that it is installed to the "/usr/bin"(default it is downloaded to here).
Sources
This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Source: Stack Overflow
| Solution | Source |
|---|---|
| Solution 1 | |
| Solution 2 | OssenCoder |
| Solution 3 | Vishnu |
| Solution 4 | meJustAndrew |
| Solution 5 | eduardoreynoso |
| Solution 6 | Dharman |
| Solution 7 | nici22 |


