How to enable auto translating in Chrome headless with Selenium?

Question

I am using Google Chrome 114 with python 3.8 and selenium v. 4.0.0 onto an Ubuntu Server machine.

This is my code that works perfectly

class Chrome:
    def __init__(self):
        self.s = ChromeService(DRIVER_PATH, log_path=GECKO_LOG_PATH)

        self.chrome_options = Options()

        self.chrome_options.add_argument("--headless")
        self.chrome_options.add_argument("start-maximized")
        self.chrome_options.add_argument("disable-infobars")
        self.chrome_options.add_experimental_option(
            "excludeSwitches",
            [
            'enable-automation',
            'disable-default-apps',
            'disable-translate'
            ]
        )
        self.chrome_options.add_argument("--disable-extensions")
        self.chrome_options.add_argument("--window-size=1920,1080")

        self.chrome_options.add_argument("--lang=en")

        prefs = {
          "translate_whitelists": {
            "en":"es",
            "jp":"es",
          },
          "translate":{"enabled":"true"},
        }
        self.chrome_options.add_experimental_option("prefs", prefs)

Since I cannot use it on ubuntu server without desktop env, I have to start chrome in headless mode but without the auto translating feature.

My questions are:

1. how can I enable auto translate in headless mode?
2. otherwise, is there a way to run chrome in head mode onto a server without desktop environment?

Thanks.

Answer 1

You can use a virtual display in order to run selenium in headed mode on a headless display, which should resolve your issue.

There are two popular libraries for Python virtual displays:

• https://pypi.org/project/PyVirtualDisplay/
• https://pypi.org/project/sbvirtualdisplay/

Here's an example of using sbvirtualdisplay:

from sbvirtualdisplay import Display

display = Display(visible=0, size=(1440, 1880))
display.start()

# Run browser tests in a headless environment

display.stop()

If you want to make sure the display is stopped, even if a script fails before the end of it, use the context manager format:

with Display(visible=0, size=(1440, 1880)):
    # Run browser tests in a headless environment
    ...