How to set default download directory in selenium Chrome Capabilities?

Question

Please find the below code with the chrome capabilities. In fact the browser is not downloading the file to the specified path.

private static DesiredCapabilities getChromeCapabilities() throws Exception {

    String chromePath = BrowserUtil.class.getResource("/Browserdrivers/chromedriver.exe").getPath();
    System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver", chromePath);
    String downloadFilepath = "C:\\TestDownloads";
    ChromeOptions options = new ChromeOptions();
    HashMap<String, Object> chromePrefs = new HashMap<String, Object>();
    chromePrefs.put("profile.default_content_settings.popups", 0);
    chromePrefs.put("download.default_directory", downloadFilepath);
    options.setExperimentalOption("prefs", chromePrefs);
    options.addArguments("--test-type");
    options.addArguments("start-maximized", "disable-popup-blocking");

    DesiredCapabilities chromeCapabilities = DesiredCapabilities.chrome();
    setProxy(chromeCapabilities);
    chromeCapabilities.setPlatform(Platform.WINDOWS);
    chromeCapabilities.setCapability("name", MDC.get("testname"));
    chromeCapabilities.setCapability(ChromeOptions.CAPABILITY, options);
    return chromeCapabilities;
}

Answer 1

For Chromedriver try out with:

String downloadFilepath = "/path/to/download";
HashMap<String, Object> chromePrefs = new HashMap<String, Object>();
chromePrefs.put("profile.default_content_settings.popups", 0);
chromePrefs.put("download.default_directory", downloadFilepath);
ChromeOptions options = new ChromeOptions();
options.setExperimentalOption("prefs", chromePrefs);
DesiredCapabilities cap = DesiredCapabilities.chrome();
cap.setCapability(CapabilityType.ACCEPT_SSL_CERTS, true);
cap.setCapability(ChromeOptions.CAPABILITY, options);
WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(cap);

Note:- Use File.separator to handle slashes, it will put syntax as per os it is executing the code. In windows you need to use \\ for path while if you are using linux or mac then use //

Hope this helps. :)

Answer 2

For Python users who see this page -- here's how I set the download directory in Python Selenium (this is just the Python version of Shubham's accepted answer):

def newChromeBrowser(headless=True, downloadPath=None):
    """ Helper function that creates a new Selenium browser """
    options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
    if headless:
        options.add_argument('headless')
    if downloadPath is not None:
        prefs = {}
        os.makedirs(downloadPath)
        prefs["profile.default_content_settings.popups"]=0
        prefs["download.default_directory"]=downloadPath
        options.add_experimental_option("prefs", prefs)
    browser = webdriver.Chrome(options=options, executable_path=CHROMEDRIVER_PATH)
    return browser

Answer 3

2020 Update:

Chrome: v84

ChromeDriver: v83

JDK: OpenJDK 11 (LTS)

Use Paths class for platform-independent file separators.

@Test
public void doFileDownload() throws Throwable {
    // Since Java 7: Relative path from project root dir
    // Put in target dir to avoid committing downloaded files
    var downloadDir = Paths.get("target").toAbsolutePath().toString();

    var prefs = new HashMap<String, Object>();
    prefs.put("download.default_directory", downloadDir); // Bypass default download directory in Chrome
    prefs.put("safebrowsing.enabled", "false"); // Bypass warning message, keep file anyway (for .exe, .jar, etc.)
    var opts = new ChromeOptions();
    opts.setHeadless(true);
    opts.setExperimentalOption("prefs", prefs);

    var driver = new ChromeDriver(opts); // ChromeDriver binary is added to PATH env var
    driver.manage().timeouts().implicitlyWait(3, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
    driver.manage().window().maximize();
    driver.get("https://the-internet.herokuapp.com/download");

    var downloadLink = driver.findElement(By.cssSelector("a[href*='some-file.txt']"));
    var downloadHref = downloadLink.getAttribute("href").replace(":", "");
    var downloadFileName = Paths.get(downloadHref).getFileName().toString();
    downloadLink.click();

    // Wait download to finish for 60s
    var downloadFilePath = Paths.get(downloadDir, downloadFileName);
    new WebDriverWait(driver, 60).until(d -> downloadFilePath.toFile().exists());

    // Since Java 11: Read content of downloaded file
    var content = Files.readString(downloadFilePath);

    // Do tests with string content...
    log.info("Content={}", content);

    driver.quit();
}

Output:

Doing mvn clean prior to any run also takes care of having to override existing files.

pom.xml:

<properties>
    <!-- Remove encoding warnings -->
    <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
    <project.reporting.outputEncoding>UTF-8</project.reporting.outputEncoding>
</properties>

<dependencies>
    <!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.seleniumhq.selenium/selenium-server -->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.seleniumhq.selenium</groupId>
        <artifactId>selenium-server</artifactId>
        <version>3.141.59</version>
        <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
    <!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.junit.jupiter/junit-jupiter -->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.junit.jupiter</groupId>
        <artifactId>junit-jupiter</artifactId>
        <version>5.6.2</version>
        <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

<build>
    <plugins>
        <!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.apache.maven.plugins/maven-compiler-plugin -->
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>3.8.1</version>
            <configuration>
                <release>11</release>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>2.22.2</version>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

Answer 4

The answer which helped me to resolve this issue on Windows: (https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromedriver/issues/detail?id=783).

Map<String, Object> prefs = new HashMap<String, Object>();
prefs.put("download.default_directory",  System.getProperty("user.dir")+ File.separator + "externalFiles" + File.separator + "downloadFiles");
ChromeOptions options = new ChromeOptions();
options.setExperimentalOption("prefs", prefs);
ChromeDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(options);

Answer 5

For Chrome driver, the below code is worked for me

String downloadFilepath = "/path/to/download";
HashMap<String, Object> chromePrefs = new HashMap<String, Object>();
chromePrefs.put("profile.default_content_settings.popups", 0);
chromePrefs.put("download.default_directory", downloadFilepath);
ChromeOptions options = new ChromeOptions();
options.setExperimentalOption("prefs", chromePrefs);
WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver(options);

Answer 6

To make it more clean and easy, I developed a library which lets you generate a ChromeOptions object which contains your download folder in one line. For example, to define "/tmp/downloads", use:

private SeleniumDownloadKPI seleniumDownloadKPI;

@BeforeEach
void setUpTest() {

    // New instance of SeleniumDownloadKPI with given download folder.
    seleniumDownloadKPI =
         new SeleniumDownloadKPI("/tmp/downloads");
    ChromeOptions chromeOptions =
            seleniumDownloadKPI.generateDownloadFolderCapability();
    driver = new ChromeDriver(chromeOptions);

The library also contains methods which allow to receive download KPI and perform assertion.