Brave 1.93.129 / Chromium 151.0.7922.71 crashes on Selenium WebDriver startup on Windows 11

[UzairHussain193]

Description

The same Selenium WebDriver script works with Google Chrome 151.0.7922.72, but fails with Brave 1.93.129 / Chromium 151.0.7922.71 on Windows 11.

This appears to be Brave-specific. Selenium Manager correctly detects the required ChromeDriver version, and Chrome opens successfully with the same Selenium setup.

Steps to reproduce

1. Install Brave 1.93.129 on Windows 11.
2. Install Python 3.12 and Selenium 4.46.0.
3. Run the minimal Selenium script below with Brave as the binary location.
4. Observe that Brave crashes before the WebDriver session is created.

Minimal repro:

import time
import tempfile
from selenium import webdriver

BROWSER_PATH = r"C:/Program Files/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/Application/brave.exe"
TEST_URL = "https://www.google.com/"

profile_dir = tempfile.TemporaryDirectory(prefix="brave-webdriver-")

options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
options.binary_location = BROWSER_PATH
options.add_argument(f"--user-data-dir={profile_dir.name}")
options.add_argument("--start-maximized")
options.add_argument("--remote-debugging-pipe")

print("Starting Brave through Selenium Manager...")
driver = webdriver.Chrome(options=options)

try:
    print("Opened Brave with browser version:", driver.capabilities.get("browserVersion"))
    driver.get(TEST_URL)
    time.sleep(15)
finally:
    driver.quit()
    profile_dir.cleanup()

Actual result

Actual Result

Brave fails during WebDriver startup.

Error:

selenium.common.exceptions.SessionNotCreatedException: Message: session not created: Chrome failed to start: crashed.
(timeout: Timed out receiving message from renderer: 60.000)
(The process started from chrome location C:/Program Files/BraveSoftware/Brave-Browser/Application/brave.exe is no longer running, so ChromeDriver is assuming that Chrome has crashed.)

Expected result

Expected Result

Brave should open successfully through Selenium WebDriver, load the target page, wait 15 seconds, and close, the same way Google Chrome does with the same Selenium setup.

Reproduces how often

Easily reproduced

Brave version (brave://version info)

Brave: 1.93.129
Chromium: 151.0.7922.71
Revision: 96e337f9f5f202e633be4c080b702279ea2a0d00
OS: Windows 11 Version 22H2 Build 22621.4317
JavaScript: V8 15.1.206.10
Executable Path: C:\Program Files\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\Application\brave.exe

Channel information

• release (stable)
• beta
• nightly

Reproducibility

• with Brave Shields disabled
• with Brave Rewards disabled
• in the latest version of Chrome

Miscellaneous information

Comparison test:

The same script works when only the binary path is changed to Google Chrome:

BROWSER_PATH = r"C:/Program Files/Google/Chrome/Application/chrome.exe"

Chrome Result:

Starting Chrome through Selenium Manager...
Opened Chrome with browser version: 151.0.7922.72
Loaded: https://www.espncricinfo.com/
Closed Chrome

Selenium Manager information:

Detected browser: chrome 151.1.93.129
Required driver: chromedriver 151.0.7922.71