How to Solve Python is ModuleNotFoundError: no module named ‘selenium’.

A common error you may encounter when using Python is modulenotfounderror: no module named ‘selenium’.

This error occurs when the Python interpreter cannot detect the Selenium library in your current environment.

This tutorial goes through the exact steps to troubleshoot this error for the Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems.

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ModuleNotFoundError: no module named ‘selenium’

What is Selenium?

Selenium is a suite of tools for automating web browsers. You can use Selenium to automate web applications for testing purposes, though it is not only for testing.

The simplest way to install Selenium is to use the package manager for Python called pip. The following installation instructions are for the major Python version 3.

How to Install Selenium on Windows Operating System

First, you need to download and install Python on your PC. Ensure you select the install launcher for all users and Add Python to PATH checkboxes. The latter ensures the interpreter is in the execution path. Pip is automatically on Windows for Python versions 2.7.9+ and 3.4+.

You can check your Python version with the following command:

python3 --version

You can install pip on Windows by downloading the installation package, opening the command line and launching the installer. You can install pip via the CMD prompt by running the following command.

python get-pip.py

You may need to run the command prompt as administrator. Check whether the installation has been successful by typing.

pip --version

Selenium installation on Windows Using pip

To install Selenium, run the following command from the command prompt.

pip3 install selenium

How to Install Selenium on Mac Operating System using pip

Open a terminal by pressing command (⌘) + Space Bar to open the Spotlight search. Type in terminal and press enter. To get pip, first ensure you have installed Python3:

python3 --version

Python 3.8.8

Download pip by running the following curl command:

curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py -o get-pip.py

The curl command allows you to specify a direct download link. Using the -o option sets the name of the downloaded file.

Install pip by running:

python3 get-pip.py

From the terminal, use pip3 to install Selenium:

pip3 install selenium

How to Install Selenium on Linux Operating Systems

All major Linux distributions have Python installed by default. However, you will need to install pip. You can install pip from the terminal, but the installation instructions depend on the Linux distribution you are using. You will need root privileges to install pip. Open a terminal and use the commands relevant to your Linux distribution to install pip.

Installing pip for Ubuntu, Debian, and Linux Mint

sudo apt install python-pip3

Installing pip for CentOS 8 (and newer), Fedora, and Red Hat

sudo dnf install python-pip3

Installing pip for CentOS 6 and 7, and older versions of Red Hat

sudo yum install epel-release

sudo yum install python-pip3

Installing pip for Arch Linux and Manjaro

sudo pacman -S python-pip

Installing pip for OpenSUSE

sudo zypper python3-pip

Selenium installation on Linux with Pip

Once you have installed pip, you can install Selenium using:

pip3 install selenium

Installing Selenium Using Anaconda

First, to create a conda environment to install PIL.

conda create -n selenium python=3.6 

Then activate the selenium container. You will see “selenium” in parentheses next to the command line prompt.

source activate selenium

Now you’re ready to install Selenium using conda.

Anaconda is a distribution of Python and R for scientific computing and data science. You can install Anaconda by going to the installation instructions. Once you have installed Anaconda and created your conda environment, you can install Selenium using one of the following commands:

conda install -c conda-forge selenium

Check Selenium Version

Once you have successfully installed Selenium, you can check the version of Selenium. If you used pip to install Selenium, you can use pip show from your terminal.

pip show selenium

Name: selenium
Version: 4.1.0

Second, within your python program, you can import selenium and then reference the __version__ attribute:

import selenium

print(selenium.__version__)

4.1.0

If you used conda to install Selenium, you could check the version using the following command:

conda list -f selenium

# Name                    Version                   Build  Channel
selenium                  3.141.0         py36hfa26744_1002    conda-forge

Summary

Congratulations on reading to the end of this tutorial. The modulenotfounderror occurs if you misspell the module name, incorrectly point to the module path or do not have the module installed in your Python environment. If you do not have the module installed in your Python environment, you can use pip to install the package. However, you must ensure you have pip installed on your system. You can also install Anaconda on your system and use the conda install command to install Selenium.

Go to the online courses page on Python to learn more about Python for data science and machine learning.

For further reading on missing modules in Python, go to the article: How to Solve Python ModuleNotFoundError: no module named ‘urllib2’.

Have fun and happy researching!