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Migrate from WebDriverManager

If your project calls WebDriverManager.chromedriver().setup() (or Boni García's io.github.bonigarcia:webdrivermanager in general) to download browser drivers, you can delete all of it. Modern Selenium resolves driver binaries itself, and Selenium Boot uses that mechanism out of the box.

Why WebDriverManager existed

Historically, Selenium needed a matching chromedriver/geckodriver binary on your machine, and keeping it in sync with the installed browser was painful. WebDriverManager solved that by downloading the right binary at runtime. Since Selenium 4.6.0 (November 2022), that job moved into Selenium itself — see below.

Selenium Manager makes it built-in​

Starting with Selenium 4.6.0, Selenium ships Selenium Manager: an automatic driver-resolution tool bundled with selenium-java. When no driver binary is found, Selenium detects your browser version, downloads the correct driver, and caches it — with no code and no extra dependency.

Selenium Boot is built on modern Selenium, so this is already active. You don't call it, configure it, or depend on it directly.

Before / after​

Before — WebDriverManager as a dependency plus a setup() call before every driver you create:

pom.xml (remove this)
<dependency>
    <groupId>io.github.bonigarcia</groupId>
    <artifactId>webdrivermanager</artifactId>
    <version>5.x</version>
</dependency>
DriverFactory.java (remove the setup calls)
import io.github.bonigarcia.wdm.WebDriverManager;

WebDriverManager.chromedriver().setup();
WebDriver driver = new ChromeDriver();

// Firefox
WebDriverManager.firefoxdriver().setup();
WebDriver driver = new FirefoxDriver();

After — nothing. There is no setup() call and no WebDriverManager dependency. With Selenium Boot you don't even create the driver — extend BaseTest and the framework does it:

LoginTest.java
import com.seleniumboot.test.BaseTest;
import org.testng.annotations.Test;

public class LoginTest extends BaseTest {

    @Test
    public void loginTest() {
        open();  // driver already created — binary resolved automatically
        // ...
    }
}

Pick the browser in config, not code:

selenium-boot.yml
browser:
  name: chrome   # chrome | firefox | edge | safari

What gets deleted​

BeforeAfter
webdrivermanager dependency in pom.xml / build.gradle✅ Removed — nothing replaces it
WebDriverManager.chromedriver().setup() calls✅ Selenium Manager (automatic)
Per-browser .setup() branches (Chrome/Firefox/Edge)✅ One browser.name config line
Pinning driver versions to match browsers✅ Selenium Manager matches them for you

FAQ​

Do I still need WebDriverManager for a specific browser version? No. Selenium Manager detects the installed browser and downloads a matching driver automatically, including for Edge and Firefox.

What about offline / air-gapped CI? Selenium Manager caches drivers under ~/.cache/selenium. Warm the cache once (or bake it into your CI image) and subsequent runs need no network. This is the same caching approach WebDriverManager used.

Can I still point at a specific driver binary? Yes — Selenium honours the standard driver-path system properties (e.g. webdriver.chrome.driver) if you set one, so pre-provisioned binaries keep working. You just no longer need to.

Next steps​