Selenium using Python – Geckodriver executable needs to be in PATH

This steps solved it for me on Ubuntu and Firefox 50.

1. Download geckodriver

2. Copy geckodriver to folder /usr/local/bin

You do not need to add:

firefox_capabilities = DesiredCapabilities.FIREFOX
firefox_capabilities['marionette'] = True
firefox_capabilities['binary'] = '/usr/bin/firefox'
browser = webdriver.Firefox(capabilities=firefox_capabilities)

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.

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.

I’ve actually discovered you can use the latest geckodriver without putting it in the system path. Currently I’m using

https://github.com/mozilla/geckodriver/releases/download/v0.12.0/geckodriver-v0.12.0-win64.zip

Firefox 50.1.0

Python 3.5.2

Selenium 3.0.2

Windows 10

I’m running a VirtualEnv (which I manage using PyCharm, and I assume it uses Pip to install everything).

In the following code I can use a specific path for the geckodriver using the executable_path parameter (I discovered this by having a look in
Libsite-packagesseleniumwebdriverfirefoxwebdriver.py ). Note I have a suspicion that the order of parameter arguments when calling the webdriver is important, which is why the executable_path is last in my code (the second to last line off to the far right).

You may also notice I use a custom Firefox profile to get around the sec_error_unknown_issuer problem that you will run into if the site you’re testing has an untrusted certificate. See How to disable Firefox's untrusted connection warning using Selenium?

After investigation it was found that the Marionette driver is incomplete and still in progress, and no amount of setting various capabilities or profile options for dismissing or setting certificates was going to work. So it was just easier to use a custom profile.

Anyway, here’s the code on how I got the geckodriver to work without being in the path:

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.desired_capabilities import DesiredCapabilities

firefox_capabilities = DesiredCapabilities.FIREFOX
firefox_capabilities['marionette'] = True

#you probably don't need the next 3 lines they don't seem to work anyway
firefox_capabilities['handleAlerts'] = True
firefox_capabilities['acceptSslCerts'] = True
firefox_capabilities['acceptInsecureCerts'] = True

# In the next line I'm using a specific Firefox profile because
# I wanted to get around the sec_error_unknown_issuer problems with the new Firefox and Marionette driver
# I create a Firefox profile where I had already made an exception for the site I'm testing
# see https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles#w_starting-the-profile-manager

ffProfilePath = 'D:WorkPyTestFrameworkFirefoxSeleniumProfile'
profile = webdriver.FirefoxProfile(profile_directory=ffProfilePath)
geckoPath = 'D:WorkPyTestFrameworkgeckodriver.exe'
browser = webdriver.Firefox(firefox_profile=profile, capabilities=firefox_capabilities, executable_path=geckoPath)
browser.get('http://stackoverflow.com')

This solved it for me.

from selenium import webdriver
driver = webdriver.Firefox(executable_path=r'yourpathgeckodriver.exe')
driver.get('http://inventwithpython.com')

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.

On macOS v10.12.1 (Sierra) and Python 2.7.10, this works for me:

def download(url):
    firefox_capabilities = DesiredCapabilities.FIREFOX
    firefox_capabilities['marionette'] = True
    browser = webdriver.Firefox(capabilities=firefox_capabilities,
                                executable_path=r'/Users/Do01/Documents/crawler-env/geckodriver')
    browser.get(url)
    return browser.page_source

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"):

Selenium answers this question in their DESCRIPTION.rst file:

Drivers
=======

Selenium requires a driver to interface with the chosen browser. Firefox,
for example, requires geckodriver <https://github.com/mozilla/geckodriver/releases>_, which needs to be installed before the below examples can be run. Make sure it’s in your PATH, e. g., place it in /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin.

Failure to observe this step will give you an error `selenium.common.exceptions.WebDriverException: Message: ‘geckodriver’ executable needs to be in PATH.

Basically just download the geckodriver, unpack it and move the executable to your /usr/bin folder.

I’m using Windows 10 and this worked for me:

1. Download geckodriver from here. Download the right version for the computer you are using.
2. Unzip the file you just downloaded and cut/copy the ".exe" file it contains
3. Navigate to C:{your python root folder}. Mine was C:Python27. Paste the geckodriver.exe file in this folder.
4. Restart your development environment.
5. Try running the code again. It should work now.

To set up geckodriver for Selenium Python:

It needs to set the geckodriver path with FirefoxDriver as the below code:

self.driver = webdriver.Firefox(executable_path = 'D:Selenium_RiponAlWasimgeckodriver-v0.18.0-win64geckodriver.exe')

Download geckodriver for your suitable OS (from https://github.com/mozilla/geckodriver/releases) → Extract it in a folder of your choice → Set the path correctly as mentioned above.

I’m using Python 3.6.2 and Selenium WebDriver 3.4.3 on Windows 10.

Another way to set up geckodriver:

i) Simply paste the geckodriver.exe under /Python/Scripts/ (in my case the folder was: C:Python36Scripts)
ii) Now write the simple code as below:

self.driver = webdriver.Firefox()

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

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.

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).

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:UsersBhavyaAnaconda2Scripts

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:Folderofyourchoice

(2) Python code sample:

import os;
os.environ["PATH"] += os.pathsep + r'X:Folderofyourchoice';

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

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

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:Python35geckodriver

geckodriver, not geckodriver.exe.

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

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

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/')

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())

1. Ensure you have the correct version of the driver (geckodriver), x86 or 64.
2. Ensure you are checking the right environment. For example, the job is running in a Docker container, whereas the environment is checked on the host OS.

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_directoryScriptsgeckodriver.exe

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')

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()

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.

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
   

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:UsersUsuarioDesktopAutomate the boring stuff with python exercisesWeb Scrapinggeckodriver.exe')
driver.get('http://inventwithpython.com')

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

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 FilesMozilla Firefoxfirefox.exe'
driver = webdriver.Firefox(firefox_options=options, executable_path=r'C:WebDriversgeckodriver.exe')
driver.get('http://google.com/')

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?}

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

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

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!