How to use Brave web browser with python, selenium and chromedriver?

Question

I switched from Google's Chrome to Brave web browser and am having a hard time getting it to work with Brave like it did with Chrome. Brave is based on chromium so I guessed it should not be that hard. I made sure that my Brave and Chromedriver are on the same version like this,

~/some/path $ chromedriver --version
ChromeDriver 76.0.3809.126 (d80a294506b4c9d18015e755cee48f953ddc3f2f-refs/branch-heads/3809@{#1024})

My chromedriver is also in /user/bin,

~/path $ cd /usr/bin/
/usr/bin $ ls | grep chromedriver
chromedriver 

And to check the Brave version, I get: Version 0.68.132 Chromium: 76.0.3809.132 (Official Build) (64-bit)

Then I run this code,

from selenium import webdriver

driver = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path='/usr/bin/brave-browser')
driver.get("http://www.python.org")
driver.close()

This opens a Brave window but then instead of getting the page the driver is pointed to, an exception is thrown,

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "webscrap.py", line 3, in <module>
    driver = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path='/usr/bin/brave-browser')
  File "/home/username/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/chrome/webdriver.py", line 73, in __init__
    self.service.start()
  File "/home/username/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/common/service.py", line 98, in start
    self.assert_process_still_running()
  File "/home/username/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/common/service.py", line 111, in assert_process_still_running
    % (self.path, return_code)
selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: Service /usr/bin/brave-browser unexpectedly exited. Status code was: -11

Trapp

Answer 1

I finally managed to make it work:

Try this python script (python3.7)

from selenium import webdriver

driver_path = "C:/Users/username/PycharmProjects/chromedriver.exe"
brave_path = "C:/Program Files (x86)/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/Application/brave.exe"

option = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
option.binary_location = brave_path
# option.add_argument("--incognito") OPTIONAL
# option.add_argument("--headless") OPTIONAL

# Create new Instance of Chrome
browser = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path=driver_path, chrome_options=option)

browser.get("https://www.google.es")

cheers.

Excurvature

Answer 2

The executable_path key is used to pass the absolute path of the WebDriver binary i.e. the chromedriver executable.

To initiate a Brave browser session additionally you have to pass the absolute location of the brave-browser binary through the binary_location argument of an instance of ChromeOptions.

So the effective code block will be:

from selenium import webdriver

chromedriver_path = '/usr/bin/chromedriver'
brave_path = '/usr/bin/brave-browser'
option = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
option.binary_location = brave_path
browser = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path=driver_path, options=option)
browser.get("https://www.google.es")

---

References

You can find a couple of relevant detailed discussions in:

• DeprecationWarning: use options instead of chrome_options error using ChromeDriver and Chrome through Selenium on Windows 10 system
• How to initiate Brave browser using Selenium and Python on Windows
• DeprecationWarning: use options instead of chrome_options error using Brave Browser With Python Selenium and Chromedriver on Windows

Bacteriolysis

Answer 3

This also works in windows 10 with Brave browser. I downloaded Chromedriver and put it in the folder with Brave.exe.

from selenium import webdriver
driver_path = "C:\\Users\\5150s\\AppData\\Local\\Programs\\Python\\Python38\\chromedriver.exe"
brave_path = "C:\\Program Files (x86)\\BraveSoftware\\Brave-Browser\\Application\\brave.exe"
option = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
option.binary_location = brave_path
browser = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path=driver_path, options=option)
browser.get("https://www.google.es")

Ermines

Make sure to download the driver that matches your Brave browser. Go to "About Brave" and look for the Chromium driver version, e.g. Chromium: 91.0.4472.164, then select that version from the Chromium download site: chromedriver.chromium.org/downloads. – Repressive

Answer 4

The solutions above gave me some errors. This code removes the executable path and options errors. Chromedriver is in the pycharm folder.

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service

driver_path = "C:/Users/johnm/PycharmProjects/chromedriver.exe"
brave_path = "C:/Program Files/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/Application/brave.exe"

s=Service(driver_path)
option = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
option.binary_location = brave_path
browser = webdriver.Chrome(service=s, options=option)
browser.get("https://www.google.es")

Etui

Answer 5

As of Selenium 4.15.2, apparently there is not anymore a need to create a Service. At least, on my Ubuntu installation (23), I could get Brave opened just using the following code.

    options = ChromeOptions()
    options.add_argument("start-maximized")
    options.binary_location = "/opt/brave.com/brave/brave"

    browser = Chrome(options=options)

Still I can't figure out how to attach to the currently running session rather than opening a brand new testing session window.

Palatable