How to configure ChromeDriver to initiate Chrome browser in Headless mode through Selenium?

It should look like this:

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

options = Options()
options.add_argument('--headless')
options.add_argument('--disable-gpu')  # Last I checked this was necessary.
driver = webdriver.Chrome(CHROMEDRIVER_PATH, chrome_options=options)

This works for me using Python 3.6, I'm sure it'll work for 2.7 too.

Update 2018-10-26: These days you can just do this:

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

options = Options()
options.headless = True
driver = webdriver.Chrome(CHROMEDRIVER_PATH, chrome_options=options)

Answer update of 13-October-2018

To initiate a google-chrome-headless browsing context using Selenium driven ChromeDriver now you can just set the --headless property to true through an instance of Options() class as follows:

• Effective code block:

  from selenium import webdriver
  from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
  
  options = Options()
  options.headless = True
  driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options, executable_path=r'C:\path\to\chromedriver.exe')
  driver.get("http://google.com/")
  print ("Headless Chrome Initialized")
  driver.quit()
  

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Answer update of 23-April-2018

Invoking google-chrome in headless mode programmatically have become much easier with the availability of the method set_headless(headless=True) as follows :

• Documentation :

  set_headless(headless=True)
      Sets the headless argument
  
      Args:
          headless: boolean value indicating to set the headless option
  

• Sample Code :

  from selenium import webdriver
  from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
  
  options = Options()
  options.set_headless(headless=True)
  driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options, executable_path=r'C:\path\to\chromedriver.exe')
  driver.get("http://google.com/")
  print ("Headless Chrome Initialized")
  driver.quit()
  

Note : --disable-gpu argument is implemented internally.

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Original Answer of Mar 30 '2018

While working with Selenium Client 3.11.x, ChromeDriver v2.38 and Google Chrome v65.0.3325.181 in Headless mode you have to consider the following points :

• You need to add the argument --headless to invoke Chrome in headless mode.

• For Windows OS systems you need to add the argument --disable-gpu

• As per Headless: make --disable-gpu flag unnecessary --disable-gpu flag is not required on Linux Systems and MacOS.

• As per SwiftShader fails an assert on Windows in headless mode --disable-gpu flag will become unnecessary on Windows Systems too.

• Argument start-maximized is required for a maximized Viewport.

• Here is the link to details about Viewport.

• You may require to add the argument --no-sandbox to bypass the OS security model.

• Effective windows code block :

  from selenium import webdriver
  from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
  
  options = Options()
  options.add_argument("--headless") # Runs Chrome in headless mode.
  options.add_argument('--no-sandbox') # Bypass OS security model
  options.add_argument('--disable-gpu')  # applicable to windows os only
  options.add_argument('start-maximized') # 
  options.add_argument('disable-infobars')
  options.add_argument("--disable-extensions")
  driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=options, executable_path=r'C:\path\to\chromedriver.exe')
  driver.get("http://google.com/")
  print ("Headless Chrome Initialized on Windows OS")
  

• Effective linux code block :

  from selenium import webdriver
  from selenium.webdriver.chrome.options import Options
  
  options = Options()
  options.add_argument("--headless") # Runs Chrome in headless mode.
  options.add_argument('--no-sandbox') # # Bypass OS security model
  options.add_argument('start-maximized')
  options.add_argument('disable-infobars')
  options.add_argument("--disable-extensions")
  driver = webdriver.Chrome(chrome_options=options, executable_path='/path/to/chromedriver')
  driver.get("http://google.com/")
  print ("Headless Chrome Initialized on Linux OS")
  

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Outro

How to make firefox headless programmatically in Selenium with python?

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tl; dr

Here is the link to the Sandbox story.

Update August 20, 2020 -- Now is simple!

from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait

chrome_options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
chrome_options.headless = True

self.driver = webdriver.Chrome(
            executable_path=DRIVER_PATH, chrome_options=chrome_options)