Selenium in Python on Mac - Geckodriver executable needs to be in PATH

Question

I'm new to programming and started with Python about 2 months ago and am going over Sweigart's Automate the Boring Stuff with Python text. I'm using Spyder 3 and already installed the selenium module and the Firefox browser. I used the following code in python file

from selenium import webdriver
browser = webdriver.Firefox()
browser.get('http://inventwithpython.com')

I get this error:

Message: 'geckodriver' executable needs to be in PATH.

I've downloaded geckodriver.exe in addition to going into terminal and installing it using

brew install geckodriver

Oddly enough, if I go into terminal and type "python" and then put the code in, it works, but not when I run the file in Spyder. Where do I need to put the geckodriver.exe file for it to work? I've tried putting it in various folders (same folder as the python file, same folder as the webdriver file, in the user bin, and so on) but I get the same error

I've looked at similar questions but can't seem to find something that works. I've also tried with Chrome but I get the same error but with chromedriver.

which geckodriver

yields /usr/local/bin/geckodriver

I'm also on a Mac, so file paths are a little more difficult for me than on windows.

Caecilian

What is the result of which geckodriver? – Elysha

In terminal the result is /usr/local/bin/geckodriver – Caecilian

When you run which geckodriver on the console (in the terminal) - what output do you get? – Elysha

It looks like it's stored in the local bin – Caecilian

Please let me know more information about your environment. I ran spyder on python 3.5.0, pyQt5, selenium 3.0.2, geckodriver 0.11.1 and mac OS. That worked well. – Chil

check whether /usr/local/bin/ is present in system PATH by executing the command echo $PATH, which prints all the paths. – Hakim

I'm using macOS Sierra, selenium 3.0.2, and geckodriver 0.11.1 (I get the same error with chromedriver too). When I execute echo $PATH in terminal I get "/Users/sethkillian/anaconda/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin" – Caecilian

Answer 1

SOLVED: I placed the geckodriver exe in /Users/sethkillian/anaconda/bin and now it works from Spyder with no problem. Thanks for the help!

Caecilian

Answer 2

Download the geckodriver and put it in /usr/local/bin; then use webdriver.Firefox like this:

from selenium import webdriver
driver = webdriver.Firefox(executable_path = '/usr/local/bin/geckodriver')

Shaper

Answer 3

Perhaps someone can explain why the path isn't found. And I also hope this helps someone else troubleshoot their own path issues.

You can certainly put the geckodriver executible anywhere you'd like. On my Mac, I chose ~/.local/bin since its a common place for executables to be stored that are specific to a user account. For example. the Heroku CLI is placed in ~/.local/share. This approach also eliminates the need for superuser access when adding an executable to a system location like /usr/local/bin

I then added it to the path within my .profile with

    EXPORT PATH=$PATH:~/.local/bin

I tested by opening a terminal and checking with:

    geckodriver --version

which worked fine.

But from a Python virtual environment, for some reason, the system path isn't passed?? I discovered this by adding to my selenium test script:

    import sys

    for p in sys.path:
        print(p)

Which showed:

    /Users/philip/Devel/myproject
    /Users/philip/.virtualenvs/myproject/lib/python36.zip
    /Users/philip/.virtualenvs/myproject/lib/python3.6
    /Users/philip/.virtualenvs/myproject/lib/python3.6/lib-dynload
    /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/lib/python3.6
    /Users/philip/.virtualenvs/myproject/lib/python3.6/site-packages

So ultimately I had to specify the path with:

    self.browser = webdriver.Firefox(executable_path=r'/Users/philip/.local/bin/geckodriver')

This approach works fine, but I'd still like to know why I couldn't set the path in the virtual environment.

Mullens

i installed using brew, its in , /opt/homebrew/bin/geckodriver path , what should i do? – Tercentenary

Answer 4

simply download the executable that matches your os from here executables

unzip and put the executable in desired folder in your project use **os ** or any path library to get the path your executable import os from selenium import webdriver path_executable = os.path.abs( path/to/executable ) browser = webdriver.Firefox( executable_path= path_executable )

or you need something flexible which will work no matter the os and no need to download executable but its slower use pip to install webdriver manager webdriver manager doc$ pip install webdriver_manager then from selenium import webdriver from webdriver_manager.firefox import GeckoDriverManager browser=webdriver.Firefox(executable_path=GeckoDriverManager().install())

Philipson

Welcome to Stack Overflow! Please note you are answering a very old and already answered question. Here is a guide on How to Answer. – Wormhole

Answer 5

If you're on MACos and you're running PyCharm, I too couldn't get my project to find anything in /usr/local/bin, where I had geckodriver installed. $PATH was correct and I was able to run it in Terminal on any folder. So I copied the binary over to \venv\bin for the project I am running and it worked like a charm - PyCharm in fact! :P

Philoctetes

Answer 6

My solution for Mac OS Catalina + Firexfox was to set correctly the path of firefox

export PATH=/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/:${PATH}

Develop

Answer 7

I was able to install the webdriver-manager and could see the package under site packages. But the imports weren't resolved . Any leads to why this was happening on MAC. Im running Python 3.7

Hothouse

If you have a new question, please ask it by clicking the Ask Question button. Include a link to this question if it helps provide context. - From Review – Leatherleaf

Answer 8

you can download geckodriver from Firefox website based on your os. And can use Service to import it.

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

options.binary_location = 'firefox_path'
driver_service = Service('geckodriver_path')
webdriver.Firefox(service=driver_service, options=options)

for code to start with here.

Dyal