How can I get chrome version using python code without having to actually open up a browser?

Question

I'm writing a bunch of programs using python selenium. In order to scrape content from different websites, I need to download chromedriver.exe that is compatible with my current version of chrome. However, chrome is constantly being updated, so I want to write a program that will first check if chrome and chromedriver versions are compatible before running my programs. So, I need a way to get my current chrome version without using chromewebdriver or actually opening up a browser. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

For windows you could try with the CMD reg query "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Google Chrome" as follow:

import os
stream = os.popen('reg query "HKLM\\SOFTWARE\\Wow6432Node\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Uninstall\\Google Chrome"')
output = stream.read()
print(output)

To extract the google_version from the output you could try the following:

import os


def extract_version(output):
    try:
        google_version = ''
        for letter in output[output.rindex('DisplayVersion    REG_SZ') + 24:]:
            if letter != '\n':
                google_version += letter
            else:
                break
        return(google_version.strip())
    except TypeError:
        return


stream = os.popen('reg query "HKLM\\SOFTWARE\\Wow6432Node\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Uninstall\\Google Chrome"')
output = stream.read()
google_version = extract_version(output)
print(google_version)

Answer 2

If you are working on Linux: Try this in terminal(If you want to get the result in python script, you need to use subprocess.popen()):

google-chrome --version

---

You may need to use which google-chrome to know whether you have install it.Hope it would help.