There's a lot of questions relating to this and a lot of various answers. The issue is that using Selenium in a Python process without a console window of its own will cause it to launch its drivers (including the chromedriver) in a new window.
Rather than modifying the Selenium code directly (although this needs to be done eventually) one option you have is to create your own sub-classes for both the Chrome WebDriver and the Service class it uses. The Service class is where Selenium actually calls Popen to launch the service process, e.g. chromedriver.exe (as mentioned in the accepted answer):
import errno
import os
import platform
import subprocess
import sys
import time
import warnings
from selenium.common.exceptions import WebDriverException
from selenium.webdriver.common import utils
from selenium.webdriver.remote.webdriver import WebDriver as RemoteWebDriver
from selenium.webdriver.chrome import service, webdriver, remote_connection
class HiddenChromeService(service.Service):
def start(self):
try:
cmd = [self.path]
cmd.extend(self.command_line_args())
if platform.system() == 'Windows':
info = subprocess.STARTUPINFO()
info.dwFlags = subprocess.STARTF_USESHOWWINDOW
info.wShowWindow = 0 # SW_HIDE (6 == SW_MINIMIZE)
else:
info = None
self.process = subprocess.Popen(
cmd, env=self.env,
close_fds=platform.system() != 'Windows',
startupinfo=info,
stdout=self.log_file,
stderr=self.log_file,
stdin=subprocess.PIPE)
except TypeError:
raise
except OSError as err:
if err.errno == errno.ENOENT:
raise WebDriverException(
"'%s' executable needs to be in PATH. %s" % (
os.path.basename(self.path), self.start_error_message)
)
elif err.errno == errno.EACCES:
raise WebDriverException(
"'%s' executable may have wrong permissions. %s" % (
os.path.basename(self.path), self.start_error_message)
)
else:
raise
except Exception as e:
raise WebDriverException(
"Executable %s must be in path. %s\n%s" % (
os.path.basename(self.path), self.start_error_message,
str(e)))
count = 0
while True:
self.assert_process_still_running()
if self.is_connectable():
break
count += 1
time.sleep(1)
if count == 30:
raise WebDriverException("Can't connect to the Service %s" % (
self.path,))
class HiddenChromeWebDriver(webdriver.WebDriver):
def __init__(self, executable_path="chromedriver", port=0,
options=None, service_args=None,
desired_capabilities=None, service_log_path=None,
chrome_options=None, keep_alive=True):
if chrome_options:
warnings.warn('use options instead of chrome_options',
DeprecationWarning, stacklevel=2)
options = chrome_options
if options is None:
# desired_capabilities stays as passed in
if desired_capabilities is None:
desired_capabilities = self.create_options().to_capabilities()
else:
if desired_capabilities is None:
desired_capabilities = options.to_capabilities()
else:
desired_capabilities.update(options.to_capabilities())
self.service = HiddenChromeService(
executable_path,
port=port,
service_args=service_args,
log_path=service_log_path)
self.service.start()
try:
RemoteWebDriver.__init__(
self,
command_executor=remote_connection.ChromeRemoteConnection(
remote_server_addr=self.service.service_url,
keep_alive=keep_alive),
desired_capabilities=desired_capabilities)
except Exception:
self.quit()
raise
self._is_remote = False
I removed some of the extra comments and doc string goo for brevity. You would then use this custom WebDriver the same way you'd use the official Chrome one in Selenium:
from selenium import webdriver
options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.add_argument('headless')
headless_chrome = HiddenChromeWebDriver(chrome_options=options)
headless_chrome.get('http://www.example.com/')
headless_chrome.quit()
Finally, if creating a custom WebDriver is not for you and you don't mind a window flickering and disappearing then you can also use the win32gui library to hide the window after starting up:
# hide chromedriver console on Windows
def enumWindowFunc(hwnd, windowList):
""" win32gui.EnumWindows() callback """
text = win32gui.GetWindowText(hwnd)
className = win32gui.GetClassName(hwnd)
if 'chromedriver' in text.lower() or 'chromedriver' in className.lower():
win32gui.ShowWindow(hwnd, False)
win32gui.EnumWindows(enumWindowFunc, [])
