Selenium Guide: Automating Browser Interaction

Since Selenium 4.6, developers no longer need to manually download ChromeDriver. Selenium automatically detects the local browser version and downloads the appropriate driver.

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Getting Started

1. Install the latest Selenium version

pip install --upgrade selenium

2. Basic usage (no need to specify driver path)

from selenium import webdriver

# Selenium 4.6+ automatically manages the driver
driver = webdriver.Chrome()
driver.get("https://www.google.com")
print(driver.title)
driver.quit()

The first run may take longer as it will download the appropriate driver.

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Commonly Used Functions

Feature	Function & Description
Open a web page	driver.get(url): open a specific URL
Get page title	driver.title: returns the current page title
Close browser	driver.quit(): closes the entire browser
Find single element	driver.find_element(by=By.X, value="...")
Find multiple elements	driver.find_elements(by=By.X, value="...")
Click an element	element.click()
Enter text	element.send_keys("your text")
Clear text field	element.clear()
Get text from element	element.text
Get/set attribute	element.get_attribute("href")
Scroll to element	driver.execute_script("arguments[0].scrollIntoView();", element)

Common By locator options:

from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
By.ID, By.CLASS_NAME, By.NAME, By.XPATH, By.CSS_SELECTOR, By.LINK_TEXT, By.PARTIAL_LINK_TEXT

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How to Verify It Works

Try this code to ensure everything is working:

from selenium import webdriver

driver = webdriver.Chrome()
driver.get("https://www.google.com")
print(driver.title)
driver.quit()

If it opens Google and prints the title without requiring a downloaded driver, then Selenium Manager is working

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Additional Info

How Selenium Auto-Handles ChromeDriver

Since Selenium 4.6.0, the built-in Selenium Manager:

• Detects your locally installed Chrome version
• Downloads the corresponding ChromeDriver
• Automatically sets the path; no need for manual config

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Optional: Manual ChromeDriver Download

If you prefer to manually manage the driver (e.g. offline use):

• ChromeDriver download page: https://chromedriver.chromium.org/downloads
• Be sure the version matches your installed Chrome browser
• Add chromedriver to your PATH or specify the full path

Example:

from selenium import webdriver

service = webdriver.ChromeService(executable_path="/path/to/chromedriver")
driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=service)