Managing Chromedriver for Android Chrome and Webview Testing

February 02, 2026 · 8 min read · Mobile Testing

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Managing Chromedriver for Android Chrome and Webview TestingManaging Chromedriver for Android Chrome and Webview Testing

Managing Chromedriver for Android Chrome and Webview Testing

Published on
October 30, 2019
Updated on
Published on
February 13, 2022
Updated on
 by 
 Jonathan LippsJonathan Lipps
Jonathan Lipps

Appium supports automation of all kinds of Android apps -- -not only native apps. You can use Appium to, and too to. On iOS Appium has to implement a gang of custom logic to attach to Safari or hybrid apps, but on Android, our living is made much easier by the existence of Chromedriver.Chromedriveris an effectuation of the WebDriver protocol by Google, which can moderate Chrome browsers on both desktop and Android platforms.

How Chromedriver works

When you bespeak a context switch into a webview, or when you start an Appium session using thebrowserNamecapability set toChrome,Appium starts up Chromedriver for you mechanically as a subprocess. Any standard commands your examination client send to Appium while Chromedriver is active get surpass directly onto Chromedriver at that point, so that Chromedriver is effectively the component which is driving the automation of the site within the browser or webview.

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All of this works transparently to you as the Appium user because both Appium and Chromedriver expose the W3C WebDriver protocol! This fact even allows Appium to do clever things like decidenotto pass sure commands to Chromedriver and alternatively execute its own implementation of them. This is why you can still run certainmobile: commands while in a webview or browser setting, for example. From the Appium developers & # x27; perspective, Chromedriver is also decent because it get our job a lot simpler; sooner than figure out how to implement fundamental mechanization of Chrome ourselves, we can trust on the tool that Google has supply (and Google is the producer of Chrome, so they are in the best position to create the most robust and stable tool!).

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There is one downside of rely on Chromedriver, however, which is that new version of Chromedriver are not compatible with older versions of Chrome. Starting with adaptation 73, Chromedriver updated its versioning scheme to match the version of Chrome. Nowadays, what you require to ascertain is that if you have editionXX of Chrome on your device, you are using versionXXof Chromedriver with Appium. But Appium releases contain onlyoneversion of Chromedriver -- typically the latest version of Chromedriver which is out in the wild at the time of an Appium release. (So Appium 1.15.1, for illustration, comes bundled with Chromedriver76.0.3809.126). This is because we don & # x27; t want Appium user to have to download their own version of Chromedriver and manage it separately -- that & # x27; d be too many moving parts!

Read:

But what if you & # x27; ve advance to Appium 1.15.1, but the version of Chrome on your twist is only at 75? Well, then you & # x27; ll abruptly encounter an error that looks like this:

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An unknown server-side fault occurred while processing the command. Original error: unknown mistake: Chrome variant must be > = 76

Uh oh! How do you resolve this mistake? There are a few different strategies.

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Strategy 1: Update Chrome

The initiative strategy is pretty obvious. Don & # x27; t you want Chrome to be at the latest version, too? If so, only update Chrome (you can usually find x86-based APKs for emulators with a bit of judicious Googling), and you & # x27; ll be good to go. But if you need to make sure you & # x27; re at an elder variation of Chrome, or if you can & # x27; t update, or are automating a webview point a different version of Chrome, then read on ...

Don ’ t Rely on iOS Emulators & amp; Android Simulators.

Strategy 2: Tell Appium to use a different Chrome

Appium downloads and installs the version of Chrome which it was published with, if you don & # x27; t say it otherwise. But you can tell it differently! There is a command-line iris you can pass to the Appium install process that allows you to install any version of Chrome you like:

npm install appium -- chromedriver_version= '' 75.0.3770.140 ''

When you run this dictation, you & # x27; ll see Appium downloading the version you condition instead of the default. Of course, this version must exist at the Chromedriver downloads site in the expected localisation!

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Strategy 3: Use your own Chromedriver (s)

If you are responsible for automating different devices with different edition of Chrome, you might desire the Appium server not to use precisely one version of Chromedriver, but to use a number of versions, based on the automation scenario. If you & # x27; re in this situation, you can maintain your own local repository of Chromedriver executables, and legislate the way to one of them in when you commence the Appium host:

appium -- chromedriver-executable /path/to/my/chromedriver

Strategy 4: Let Appium download new Chromedrivers on the fly

By far the easiest of all the strategies is to just let Appium decide what version of Chromedriver work with your browser or webview, and download it when necessary for you. To do this work, you need to use a couple desired capabilities:

  • chromedriverExecutableDir:the path to a writable directory on the Appium host & # x27; s host, where new Chromedriver binaries can be downloaded and fulfill from
  • chromedriverChromeMappingFile:the path to a JSON file on the Appium server & # x27; s host, where a mapping will be stored of Chromedriver edition to Chrome support.
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Now, because Appium is downloading executables to the machine from the Internet, there & # x27; s a possible security risk hither (yet though Appium does control the Google-provided checksum of the downloaded file). What this intend is to use this feature, you need to enable it as an & quot; insecure & quot; characteristic when you start the Appium server:

appium -- allow-insecure chromedriver_autodownload

(If you get other insecure features to permit, likeexecute_driver_script, you can simply separate them with the, symbol).

Check:

When you put all of this together, Appium will automatically download a Chromedriver to act with your WebView or browser, and keep it in the directory specified, so that hereafter requests for automating the same adaptation of Chrome don & # x27; t trip a new download. So, if you weave up in a case where you can & # x27; t or don & # x27; t want to upgrade Chrome or are dealing with a potentially turgid number of devices with varying versions of Chrome on them, this strategy might be the key to some momentaneous saneness.

Author & # x27; s Profile

Jonathan Lipps

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Author & # x27; s Profile

Piali Mazumdar

Lead, Content Marketing, HeadSpin Inc.

Piali is a dynamic and results-driven Content Marketing Specialist with 8+ years of experience in crafting engaging narratives and marketing collateral across diverse industries. She excel in collaborating with cross-functional teams to develop innovative content scheme and deliver compelling, authentic, and impactful content that vibrate with target audiences and enhances brand authenticity.

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Managing Chromedriver for Android Chrome and Webview Testing

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Gain best visibility into functional and performance issues
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Automate build-over-build regression testing for consistent resolution
gain better visibility into functional & performance issues
Gain best visibility into functional and performance issues
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Reduce mean clip to identify/resolve during test, QA, and production
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Evaluate audio, video, and content quality of experience (QoE) effortlessly
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