Borislav Hadzhiev
Mon Apr 18 2022ยท4 min read
Photo by Austin Neill
The Python "ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'selenium'" occurs when we
forget to install the selenium
module before importing it or install it in an
incorrect environment. To solve the error, install the module by running the
pip install selenium
command.
Open your terminal in your project's root directory and install the selenium
module.
# ๐๏ธ in a virtual environment or using Python 2 pip install selenium # ๐๏ธ for python 3 (could also be pip3.10 depending on your version) pip3 install selenium # ๐๏ธ if you get permissions error sudo pip3 install selenium # ๐๏ธ if you don't have pip in your PATH environment variable python -m pip install selenium # ๐๏ธ for python 3 (could also be pip3.10 depending on your version) python3 -m pip install selenium # ๐๏ธ for Anaconda conda install -c conda-forge selenium
After you install the selenium package, try importing it like:
from selenium import webdriver driver = webdriver.Chrome() driver.get("http://www.python.org") driver.close()
If you get an error that the executable needs to be in PATH, you have to install the webdriver-manager module.
pip install webdriver-manager pip3 install webdriver-manager python3 -m pip install webdriver-manager
You can view the import statement for using the webdriver-manager
module with
each browser in the
official pypi page. Here is an
example that uses chrome:
from selenium import webdriver from selenium.webdriver.chrome.service import Service from webdriver_manager.chrome import ChromeDriverManager driver = webdriver.Chrome(service=Service(ChromeDriverManager().install())) driver.get("http://www.python.org") driver.close()
The Python error "ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'selenium'" occurs for multiple reasons:
selenium
package installed by running
pip install selenium
.selenium.py
which would shadow the official module.selenium
which would shadow the imported
variable.If the error persists, get your Python version and make sure you are installing the package using the correct Python version.
python --version
For example, my Python version is 3.10.4
, so I would install the selenium
package with pip3.10 install selenium
.
pip3.10 install selenium # ๐๏ธ if you get permissions error use pip3 (NOT pip3.X) sudo pip3 install selenium
Notice that the version number corresponds to the version of pip
I'm using.
If the PATH for pip
is not set up on your machine, replace pip
with
python3 -m pip
:
# ๐๏ธ make sure to use your version of Python, e.g. 3.10 python3 -m pip install selenium
If the "No module named 'selenium'" error persists, try restarting your IDE and development server / script.
You can check if you have the selenium
package installed by running the
pip show selenium
command.
# ๐๏ธ check if you have selenium installed pip3 show selenium # ๐๏ธ if you don't have pip setup in PATH python3 -m pip show selenium
The pip show selenium
command will either state that the package is not
installed or show a bunch of information about the package, including the
location where the package is installed.
If the package is not installed, make sure your IDE is using the correct version of Python.
selenium
package using the incorrect version or your IDE might be setup to use a different version.For example, In VSCode, you can press CTRL + Shift + P
or (โ
+ Shift
+ P
on Mac) to open the command palette.
Then type "Python select interpreter" in the field.
Then select the correct python version from the drop down menu.
If you are using a virtual environment, make sure you are installing selenium
in your virtual environment and not globally.
You can try creating a virtual environment if you don't already have one.
# ๐๏ธ use correct version of Python when creating VENV python3 -m venv venv # ๐๏ธ activate on Unix or MacOS source venv/bin/activate # ๐๏ธ activate on Windows (cmd.exe) venv\Scripts\activate.bat # ๐๏ธ activate on Windows (PowerShell) venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1 # ๐๏ธ install selenium in virtual environment pip install selenium
Your virtual environment will use the version of Python that was used to create it.
selenium.py
because that would shadow the original selenium
module.You also shouldn't be declaring a variable named selenium
as that would also
shadow the original module.
If the error is not resolved, try to uninstall the selenium
package and then
install it.
# ๐๏ธ check if you have selenium installed pip3 show selenium # ๐๏ธ if you don't have pip setup in PATH python3 -m pip show selenium # ๐๏ธ uninstall selenium pip3 uninstall selenium # ๐๏ธ if you don't have pip setup in PATH python3 -m pip uninstall selenium # ๐๏ธ install selenium pip3 install selenium # ๐๏ธ if you don't have pip setup in PATH python3 -m pip install selenium
Try restarting your IDE and development server / script.
You can also try to upgrade the version of the selenium package.
pip3 install selenium --upgrade # ๐๏ธ if you don't have pip setup in PATH python3 -m pip install selenium --upgrade
This one is for using using virtual environments (VENV) on Windows
:
This one is for using using virtual environments (VENV) on MacOS
and Linux
: