How to hide the warning “This type of file can harm your computer” while downloading .xml file using Chrome Chromedriver 79 with Selenium Java

Despite setting safebrowsing.enabled to true / false, the warning …This type of file can harm your computer… is still being displayed in browser. How to hide this information?

Answer

To enable downloading of file using Chrome/ChromeDriver hiding the warning This type of file can harm your computer you need to:

• Add the preferences:
  • download.default_directory
  • download.prompt_for_download
  • download.extensions_to_open
  • safebrowsing.enabled
• As well as add the following arguments to whilelist:
  • --safebrowsing-disable-download-protection
  • safebrowsing-disable-extension-blacklist

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Demonstration

To demonstrate downloading using selenium-chromedriver, and google-chrome through java I have clicked on the first Download link in the webpage http://www.landxmlproject.org/file-cabinet and your effective solution will be:

• Code Block:

  System.setProperty("webdriver.chrome.driver", "C:\Utility\BrowserDrivers\chromedriver.exe");
  Map<String, Object> prefs = new HashMap<String, Object>();
  prefs.put("download.default_directory", "C:/Utility/Downloads/");
  prefs.put("download.prompt_for_download", false);
  prefs.put("download.extensions_to_open", "application/xml");
  prefs.put("safebrowsing.enabled", true);
  ChromeOptions options = new ChromeOptions();
  options.setExperimentalOption("prefs", prefs);
  options.addArguments("start-maximized");
  options.addArguments("--safebrowsing-disable-download-protection");
  options.addArguments("safebrowsing-disable-extension-blacklist");
  WebDriver driver =  new ChromeDriver(options); 
  driver.get("http://www.landxmlproject.org/file-cabinet");
  new WebDriverWait(driver, 20).until(ExpectedConditions.elementToBeClickable(By.xpath("//span[text()='MntnRoad.xml']//following::span[1]//a[text()='Download']"))).click();
  

• Browser Snapshot: