WebDriverException: unknown error: cannot find Chrome binary error with Selenium in Python for older versions of Google Chrome

This error message…

WebDriverException: unknown error: cannot find Chrome binary

…implies that the ChromeDriver was unable to find the Chrome binary in the default location for your system.

As per the ChromeDriver – Requirements:

The server expects you to have Chrome installed in the default location for each system:

OS	Expected Location of Chrome
Linux	/usr/bin/google-chrome1
Mac	/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome
Windows XP	%HOMEPATH%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe
Windows Vista and newer	C:\Users%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe

¹ For Linux systems, the ChromeDriver expects /usr/bin/google-chrome to be a symlink to the actual Chrome binary.

Using a Chrome executable in a non-standard location

However you can also override the default Chrome binary location as follows:

To use Chrome version 55.x installed in non standard location through ChromeDriver v2.26 you can use the following code:

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

options = Options()
options.binary_location = "C:\\Program Files\\Chrome\\chrome64_55.0.2883.75\\chrome.exe"
driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options = options, executable_path=r'C:\path\to\chromedriver.exe')
driver.get('http://google.com/')
print("Chrome Browser Invoked")
driver.quit()

Related Docs

Reference

You can find a detailed discussion in:

• Is Chrome installation needed or only chromedriver when using Selenium?