Selenium using Python - Geckodriver executable needs to be in PATH

Question

I am going over Sweigart's Automate the Boring Stuff with Python text. I'm using IDLE and already installed the Selenium module and the Firefox browser.

Whenever I tried to run the webdriver function, I get this:

from selenium import webdriver
browser = webdriver.Firefox()

Exception:

Exception ignored in: <bound method Service.__del__ of <selenium.webdriver.firefox.service.Service object at 0x00000249C0DA1080>>
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Python\Python35\lib\site-packages\selenium\webdriver\common\service.py", line 163, in __del__
    self.stop()
  File "C:\Python\Python35\lib\site-packages\selenium\webdriver\common\service.py", line 135, in stop
    if self.process is None:
AttributeError: 'Service' object has no attribute 'process'
Exception ignored in: <bound method Service.__del__ of <selenium.webdriver.firefox.service.Service object at 0x00000249C0E08128>>
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Python\Python35\lib\site-packages\selenium\webdriver\common\service.py", line 163, in __del__
    self.stop()
  File "C:\Python\Python35\lib\site-packages\selenium\webdriver\common\service.py", line 135, in stop
    if self.process is None:
AttributeError: 'Service' object has no attribute 'process'
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Python\Python35\lib\site-packages\selenium\webdriver\common\service.py", line 64, in start
    stdout=self.log_file, stderr=self.log_file)
  File "C:\Python\Python35\lib\subprocess.py", line 947, in __init__
    restore_signals, start_new_session)
  File "C:\Python\Python35\lib\subprocess.py", line 1224, in _execute_child
    startupinfo)
FileNotFoundError: [WinError 2] The system cannot find the file specified

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<pyshell#11>", line 1, in <module>
    browser = webdriver.Firefox()
  File "C:\Python\Python35\lib\site-packages\selenium\webdriver\firefox\webdriver.py", line 135, in __init__
    self.service.start()
  File "C:\Python\Python35\lib\site-packages\selenium\webdriver\common\service.py", line 71, in start
    os.path.basename(self.path), self.start_error_message)
selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: 'geckodriver' executable needs to be in PATH.

I think I need to set the path for geckodriver, but I am not sure how, so how would I do this?

Answer 1

Steps for Mac

The simple solution is to download GeckoDriver and add it to your system PATH. You can use either of the two approaches:

Short Method

1. Download and unzip Geckodriver.

2. Mention the path while initiating the driver:

   driver = webdriver.Firefox(executable_path='/your/path/to/geckodriver')
   

Long Method

1. Download and unzip Geckodriver.

2. Open .bash_profile. If you haven't created it yet, you can do so using the command: touch ~/.bash_profile. Then open it using: open ~/.bash_profile

3. Considering GeckoDriver file is present in your Downloads folder, you can add the following line(s) to the .bash_profile file:

   PATH="/Users/<your-name>/Downloads/geckodriver:$PATH"
   export PATH
   

By this you are appending the path to GeckoDriver to your System PATH. This tells the system where GeckoDriver is located when executing your Selenium scripts.

4. Save the .bash_profile and force it to execute. This loads the values immediately without having to reboot. To do this you can run the following command:

source ~/.bash_profile

5. That's it. You are done! You can run the Python script now.

Answer 2

I developed a script on Linux desktop, to deploy on my headless server. I needed to update running on Windows but got this same error for a couple of reasons:

"selenium.common.exceptions.sessionnotcreatedexception: message: expected browser binary location, but unable to find binary in default location, no 'moz:firefoxoptions.binary' capability provided, and no binary flag set on the command line"

This is Windows; I needed to install Firefox, which I probably goofed up because it was lagging and I had two installations progressing for a time.

Once Firefox was installed I found a confirmed solution (eg https://stackoverflow.com/a/42122284) instructing me to use executable_path:

from selenium import webdriver
driver = webdriver.Firefox(executable_path=r'your\path\geckodriver.exe')

That parameter is unrecognised since a couple of years ago. Instead I need a Service instance. I add this alongside my options, which were required because Firefox still could not be found (which my impatience double installing might be blamed for):

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver import FirefoxOptions
from selenium.webdriver.firefox.service import Service
opts.binary_location = r"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe"
service = Service(r"C:\Users\pythonista\PycharmProjects\world_eater\geckodriver.exe")
driver = webdriver.Firefox(service=service, options=opts)

This is my only selenium project presently, it can manage its own geckodriver.

Answer 3

The major changes of selenium 4.10.0 mean that you'll no longer see the Geckodriver error message if you upgrade your selenium version. selenium has a built-in driver manager (now fully out of beta) that will automatically download geckodriver for you if it's not found on your system PATH. Even the method arg executable_path has been removed from webdriver.Firefox(), as seen below:

https://github.com/SeleniumHQ/selenium/commit/9f5801c82fb3be3d5850707c46c3f8176e3ccd8e

Now, this is all you need to launch Firefox, even if it is not on your System Path:

from selenium import webdriver
driver = webdriver.Firefox()
# ...
driver.quit()

To customize Firefox, use the options and service args:

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.firefox.service import Service

service = Service()
options = webdriver.FirefoxOptions()
driver = webdriver.Firefox(service=service, options=options)
# ...
driver.quit()

(As before, geckodriver will be downloaded automatically if it is not found on your system PATH.)

Answer 4

It's really rather sad that none of the books published on Selenium/Python and most of the comments on this issue via Google do not clearly explain the pathing logic to set this up on Mac (everything is Windows!). The YouTube videos all pickup at the "after" you've got the pathing setup (in my mind, the cheap way out!). So, for you wonderful Mac users, use the following to edit your Bash path files:

touch ~/.bash_profile; open ~/.bash_profile*

Then add a path something like this....

# Setting PATH for geckodriver
PATH=“/usr/bin/geckodriver:${PATH}”
export PATH

# Setting PATH for Selenium Firefox
PATH=“~/Users/yourNamePATH/VEnvPythonInterpreter/lib/python2.7/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/firefox/:${PATH}”
export PATH

# Setting PATH for executable on Firefox driver
PATH=“/Users/yournamePATH/VEnvPythonInterpreter/lib/python2.7/site-packages/selenium/webdriver/common/service.py:${PATH}”
export PATH*

This worked for me.

Answer 5

Ubuntu 18.04+ and the newest release of geckodriver

This should also work for other Unix-like varieties as well.

export GV=v0.30.0
wget "https://github.com/mozilla/geckodriver/releases/download/$GV/geckodriver-$GV-linux64.tar.gz"
tar xvzf geckodriver-$GV-linux64.tar.gz
chmod +x geckodriver
sudo cp geckodriver /usr/local/bin/

For Mac update to:

geckodriver-$GV-macos.tar.gz

Answer 6

If you are using Anaconda, all you have to do is activate your virtual environment and then install geckodriver using the following command:

conda install -c conda-forge geckodriver

Answer 7

selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: 'geckodriver' executable needs to be in PATH.

First of all you will need to download latest executable geckodriver from here to run latest Firefox using Selenium

Actually, the Selenium client bindings tries to locate the geckodriver executable from the system PATH. You will need to add the directory containing the executable to the system path.

• On Unix systems you can do the following to append it to your system’s search path, if you’re using a Bash-compatible shell:

  export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/directory/of/executable/downloaded/in/previous/step
  

• On Windows you will need to update the Path system variable to add the full directory path to the executable geckodriver manually or command line** (don't forget to restart your system after adding executable geckodriver into system PATH to take effect)**. The principle is the same as on Unix.

Now you can run your code same as you're doing as below :-

from selenium import webdriver

browser = webdriver.Firefox()

selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: Expected browser binary location, but unable to find binary in default location, no 'moz:firefoxOptions.binary' capability provided, and no binary flag set on the command line

The exception clearly states you have installed Firefox some other location while Selenium is trying to find Firefox and launch from the default location, but it couldn't find it. You need to provide explicitly Firefox installed binary location to launch Firefox as below :-

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.firefox.firefox_binary import FirefoxBinary

binary = FirefoxBinary('path/to/installed firefox binary')
browser = webdriver.Firefox(firefox_binary=binary)

Answer 8

A new way to avert the error is using Conda environments.

Use conda install -c conda-forge geckodriver and you do not have to add anything to the path or edit the code!

Answer 9

For MacBook users:

Step 1:

Open this link and copy that Homebrew path, paste it in terminal and install it.

Step 2:

brew install geckodriver

Step 3:

pip install webdriver-manager

Answer 10

For versions Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) and later you can do:

For Firefox:
sudo apt-get install firefox-geckodriver

For Chrome:
sudo apt-get install chromium-chromedriver

Answer 11

Manual steps to install geckodriver on Ubuntu

• Visit https://github.com/mozilla/geckodriver/releases

• Download the latest version of "geckodriver-vX.XX.X-linux64.tar.gz"

• Unarchive the tarball (tar -xvzf geckodriver-vX.XX.X-linux64.tar.gz)

• Give executable permissions to geckodriver (chmod +x geckodriver)

• Move the geckodriver binary to /usr/local/bin or any location on your system PATH.

Script to install geckodriver on Ubuntu:

#!/bin/bash

INSTALL_DIR="/usr/local/bin"

json=$(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/mozilla/geckodriver/releases/latest)
url=$(echo "$json" | jq -r '.assets[].browser_download_url | select(contains("linux64"))')
curl -s -L "$url" | tar -xz
chmod +x geckodriver
sudo mv geckodriver "$INSTALL_DIR"
echo "installed geckodriver binary in $INSTALL_DIR"

_{This answer was entirely copied from: Corey Goldberg's answer to How to install geckodriver in Ubuntu?}

Answer 12

This error message...

FileNotFoundError: [WinError 2] The system cannot find the file specified

...implies that your program was unable to locate the specified file and while handling the exception the following exception occurred:

selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: 'geckodriver' executable needs to be in PATH.

... which implies that your program was unable to locate the GeckoDriver in the process of initiating/spawnning a new Browsing Context i.e. Firefox Browser session.

---

You can download the latest GeckoDriver from mozilla / geckodriver, unzip/untar and store the GeckoDriver binary/executable anywhere with in your system passing the absolute path of the GeckoDriver through the key executable_path as follows:

from selenium import webdriver

driver = webdriver.Firefox(executable_path='/path/to/geckodriver')
driver.get('http://google.com/')

---

In case firefox is not installed at the default location (i.e. installed at a custom location) additionally you need to pass the absolute path of firefox binary through the attribute binary_location as follows:

# An Windows example
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.firefox.options import Options

options = Options()
options.binary_location = r'C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe'
driver = webdriver.Firefox(firefox_options=options, executable_path=r'C:\WebDrivers\geckodriver.exe')
driver.get('http://google.com/')

Answer 13

geckodriver is not installed by default.

geckodriver

Output:

Command 'geckodriver' not found, but it can be installed with:

sudo apt install firefox-geckodriver

The following command not only installs it, but it also puts it in the executable PATH.

sudo apt install firefox-geckodriver

The problem is solved with only a single step. I had exactly the same error as you and it was gone as soon as I installed it. Go ahead and give it a try.

which geckodriver

Output:

/usr/bin/geckodriver

---

geckodriver

Output:

1337    geckodriver    INFO    Listening on 127.0.0.1:4444
^C

Answer 14

It is also possible to do echo PATH (Linux) and just move geckodriver to the folder of your liking. If a system (not virtual environment) folder is the target, the driver becomes globally accessible.

Answer 15

For me it was enough just to install geckodriver in the same environment:

brew install geckodriver

And the code was not changed:

from selenium import webdriver
browser = webdriver.Firefox()

Answer 16

Consider installing a containerized Firefox:

docker pull selenium/standalone-firefox
docker run --rm -d -p 5555:4444 --shm-size=2g selenium/standalone-firefox

Connect using webdriver.Remote:

driver = webdriver.Remote('http://localhost:5555/wd/hub', DesiredCapabilities.FIREFOX)
driver.set_window_size(1280, 1024)
driver.get('https://toolbox.googleapps.com/apps/browserinfo/')
driver.save_screenshot('info.png')

Answer 17

On macOS with Homebrew already installed, you can simply run the Terminal command:

brew install geckodriver

Because Homebrew already did extend the PATH there isn’t any need to modify any startup scripts.

Answer 18

On Raspberry Pi I had to create it from the ARM driver and set the geckodriver and log path in file webdriver.py:

sudo nano /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/selenium/webdriver/firefox/webdriver.py

def __init__(self, firefox_profile=None, firefox_binary=None,
             timeout=30, capabilities=None, proxy=None,
             executable_path="/PATH/gecko/geckodriver",
             firefox_options=None,
             log_path="/PATH/geckodriver.log"):

Answer 19

Some additional input/clarification:

The following suffices as a resolution for Windows 7, Python 3.6, and Selenium 3.11:

dsalaj's note for another answer for Unix is applicable to Windows as well; tinkering with the PATH environment variable at the Windows level and restart of the Windows system can be avoided.

(1) Download geckodriver (as described in this thread earlier) and place the (unzipped) geckdriver.exe at X:\Folder\of\your\choice

(2) Python code sample:

import os;
os.environ["PATH"] += os.pathsep + r'X:\Folder\of\your\choice';

from selenium import webdriver;
browser = webdriver.Firefox();
browser.get('http://localhost:8000')
assert 'Django' in browser.title

Notes:

(1) It may take about 10 seconds for the above code to open up the Firefox browser for the specified URL.

(2) The Python console would show the following error if there's no server already running at the specified URL or serving a page with the title containing the string 'Django':

selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: Reached error page: about:neterror?e=connectionFailure&u=http%3A//localhost%3A8000/&c=UTF-8&f=regular&d=Firefox%20can%E2%80%9

Answer 20

The answer by saurabh solves the issue, but it doesn't explain why Automate the Boring Stuff with Python doesn't include those steps.

This is caused by the book being based on Selenium 2.x and the Firefox driver for that series does not need the Gecko driver. The Gecko interface to drive the browser was not available when Selenium was being developed.

The latest version in the Selenium 2.x series is 2.53.6 (see e.g. these answers, for an easier view of the versions).

The 2.53.6 version page doesn't mention Gecko at all. But since version 3.0.2 the documentation explicitly states you need to install the Gecko driver.

If after an upgrade (or install on a new system), your software that worked fine before (or on your old system) doesn't work anymore and you are in a hurry, pin the Selenium version in your virtualenv by doing

pip install selenium==2.53.6

but of course the long term solution for development is to setup a new virtualenv with the latest version of selenium, install the Gecko driver and test if everything still works as expected.

But the major version bump might introduce other API changes that are not covered by your book, so you might want to stick with the older Selenium, until you are confident enough that you can fix any discrepancies between the Selenium 2 and Selenium 3 API yourself.

Answer 21

On Windows 10 it works for me downloading the geckodriver.exe. I just had to update Firefox.

Below the code that I used:

from selenium import webdriver
driver = webdriver.Firefox(
    executable_path=r'C:\Users\Usuario\Desktop\Automate the boring stuff with python exercises\Web Scraping\geckodriver.exe')
driver.get('http://inventwithpython.com')

Answer 22

You can solve this issue by using a simple command if you are on Linux

1. First, download (https://github.com/mozilla/geckodriver/releases) and extract the ZIP file

2. Open the extracted folder

3. Open the terminal from the folder (where the geckodriver file is located after extraction)

   

4. Now run this simple command on your terminal to copy the geckodriver into the correct folder:

    sudo cp geckodriver /usr/local/bin
   

Answer 23

If you use a virtual environment and Windows 10 (maybe it's the same for other systems), you just need to put geckodriver.exe into the following folder in your virtual environment directory:

...\my_virtual_env_directory\Scripts\geckodriver.exe

Answer 24

I see the discussions still talk about the old way of setting up geckodriver by downloading the binary and configuring the path manually.

This can be done automatically using webdriver-manager

pip install webdriver-manager

Now the above code in the question will work simply with the below change,

from selenium import webdriver
from webdriver_manager.firefox import GeckoDriverManager

driver = webdriver.Firefox(executable_path=GeckoDriverManager().install())

Answer 25

from webdriverdownloader import GeckoDriverDownloader # vs ChromeDriverDownloader vs OperaChromiumDriverDownloader
gdd = GeckoDriverDownloader()
gdd.download_and_install()
#gdd.download_and_install("v0.19.0")

This will get you the path to your gekodriver.exe on Windows.

from selenium import webdriver
driver = webdriver.Firefox(executable_path=r'C:\\Users\\username\\\bin\\geckodriver.exe')
driver.get('https://www.amazon.com/')

Answer 26

If you want to add the driver paths on Windows 10:

1. Right click on the "This PC" icon and select "Properties"

   

2. Click on “Advanced System Settings”

3. Click on “Environment Variables” at the bottom of the screen

4. In the “User Variables” section highlight “Path” and click “Edit”

5. Add the paths to your variables by clicking “New” and typing in the path for the driver you are adding and hitting enter.

6. Once you done entering in the path, click “OK”

7. Keep clicking “OK” until you have closed out all the screens

Answer 27

For Windows users

Use the original code as it's:

from selenium import webdriver
browser = webdriver.Firefox()
driver.get("https://www.google.com")

Then download the driver from: mozilla/geckodriver

Place it in a fixed path (permanently)... As an example, I put it in:

C:\Python35

Then go to the environment variables of the system. In the grid of "System variables" look for the Path variable and add:

;C:\Python35\geckodriver

geckodriver, not geckodriver.exe.

Answer 28

I am using Windows 10 and Anaconda 2. I tried setting the system path variable, but it didn't work out. Then I simply added geckodriver.exe file to the Anaconda 2/Scripts folder and everything works great now.

For me the path was:

C:\Users\Bhavya\Anaconda2\Scripts

Answer 29

The easiest way for Windows!

Download the latest version of geckodriver from here. Add the geckodriver.exe file to the Python directory (or any other directory which already in PATH). This should solve the problem (it was tested on Windows 10).

Answer 30

Visit Gecko Driver and get the URL for the Gecko driver from the Downloads section.

Clone this repository: https://github.com/jackton1/script_install.git

cd script_install

Run

./installer --gecko-driver https://github.com/mozilla/geckodriver/releases/download/v0.18.0/geckodriver-v0.25.0-linux64.tar.gz