i recently ran into the problem, that all my python scripts which utilize the selenium module are broken apparently due to a google chrome update. It seems like selenium/google chrome always asks to select a user profile no matter what options are given inside the python script e.g. "user-data-dir" has no effect at all. This occurs even in headless mode. The original script was able to download a pdf in the background without the "user-data-dir" option.
Has anyone run into the same issue and found a solution to it?
Below an example code which worked fine before.
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
options = Options()
options.add_argument('--headless')
#options.add_argument(r"--user-data-dir=C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Profile 1") # this option does not make any difference
options.add_argument('log-level=3')
options.add_experimental_option("prefs", {
"download.default_directory": directory,
"download.prompt_for_download": False,
"download.directory_upgrade": True,
"plugins.always_open_pdf_externally": True,
})
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options)
driver.get("http://www.google.com") #original code used a different website
Using selenium in python without having to select a user profile.
This is not an actual answer to selenium, but for now my solution is to abandon selenium and instead use playwright which can be used just the same way i need.