Disabling PDF Viewer plugin in chromedriver

Question

I\'m trying to batch-download a lot of files within the BlackBoard environment (used a lot on universities/schools around the world). I am able to retrieve the links where t

Answer 1

Ari's answer was almost working properly. I only needed to encapsulate the plugin's name into a list:

chromeOptions = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
prefs = {"plugins.plugins_disabled" : ["Chrome PDF Viewer"]} # Here should be a list
chromeOptions.add_experimental_option("prefs",prefs)
chromedriver = "path/to/chromedriver.exe"
driver = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path=chromedriver, chrome_options=chromeOptions)

The downloading now works just fine!

Answer 2

Can you set the plugin to be disable as a preference?

chromeOptions = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
prefs = {"plugins.plugins_disabled" : "Chrome PDF Viewer"}
chromeOptions.add_experimental_option("prefs",prefs)
chromedriver = "path/to/chromedriver.exe"
driver = webdriver.Chrome(executable_path=chromedriver, chrome_options=chromeOptions)

See "setting Chrome preferences w/ Selenium Webdriver in Python" and "How to disable Chrome Plugins in Selenium WebDriver using Java".

Answer 3

Chrome 57 change the setting... use this to disable Chrome PDF viewer:

//To disable PDF viewer plugins with Chrome 57
chromePrefs.put("plugins.always_open_pdf_externally", true);