Selenium is an open source tool for web browsers automation that is widely used in tandem with Python to test web applications.

As these tests are often automated and run on dedicated nodes, there is a sense to run Selenium in a headless mode, i.e. without opening a browser.

This note shows how to run headless Selenium in Python on the example of Chrome and Firefox browsers controlled by a ChromeDriver and GeckoDriver correspondingly.

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Run Headless Selenium in Python

Create a project’s working directory:

$ mkdir -p ~/projects/headless-selenium

Inside the project’s working directory create and activate a virtual environment:

$ cd ~/projects/headless-selenium
$ python3 -m venv venv
$ . venv/bin/activate

Install Selenium:

$ pip install selenium webdriver_manager
$ pip show selenium | grep -i version
Version: 4.4.3
$ pip show webdriver_manager | grep -i version
Version: 3.8.3

Headless Chrome (ChromeDriver)

Download and unzip the latest stable version of a ChromeDriver (the executable that Selenium uses to interact with Chrome):

$ sudo unzip ~/Downloads/chromedriver_linux64.zip -d /usr/local/bin
$ chromedriver --version
ChromeDriver 104.0.5112.79

Create a run-headless-chrome.py with the contents as follows:

# run-headless-chrome.py
# by www.ShellHacks.com

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

chrome_options = Options()
chrome_options.add_argument("--headless")
driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=Service('/usr/local/bin/chromedriver'),
                          options=chrome_options)
driver.get('https://example.tld')
print(driver.page_source.encode("utf-8"))
driver.quit()

Execute the Python script:

$ python run-headless-chrome.py

This script should run Selenium headless (without opening Chrome) and print the source code of the https://example.tld webpage to the terminal.

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Headless Firefox (GeckoDriver)

Download and untar the latest stable version of a GeckoDriver (the executable that Selenium uses to interact with Firefox):

$ sudo tar -xvf ~/Downloads/geckodriver-*.tar.gz -C /usr/local/bin/
$ geckodriver --version
geckodriver 0.31.0

Create a run-headless-firefox.py with the contents as follows:

# run-headless-firefox.py
# by www.ShellHacks.com

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

firefox_options = Options()
firefox_options.add_argument("--headless")
driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=Service('/usr/local/bin/geckodriver'),
                          options=firefox_options)
driver.get('https://base64-encode.online')
print(driver.page_source.encode("utf-8"))
driver.quit()

Execute the Python script:

$ python run-headless-firefox.py

This script should run Selenium headless (without opening Firefox) and print the source code of the https://example.tld webpage to the terminal.