[🐛 Bug]: Selenium C# doesn't set the default directory as configured.

[Giorgio6846]

Description

Even though the download directory is explicitly configured in Selenium:

options.AddUserProfilePreference("download.default_directory", _downloadPath);
options.AddUserProfilePreference("savefile.default_directory", _downloadPath);

Chrome ignores these settings when running inside the Docker container. According to the debugging logs, the configured download path is not being honored, and files are downloaded elsewhere.

The same configuration works correctly when using Selenium with Python, but it fails when using Selenium with C#.

Environment details:
Selenium C#: 4.45.0
Docker Image: selenium/standalone-chrome:149.0-20260606

Reproducible Code

public void CreateDriver()
        {

            var options = new ChromeOptions
            {
                UseWebSocketUrl = true,
                EnableDownloads = true,
                AcceptInsecureCertificates = true,
            };
            //options.AddAdditionalOption("webSocketUrl", true);
            //options.set_capability("goog:loggingPrefs", { "performance": "ALL"});.

            options.AddArgument("--no-sandbox");
            options.AddArgument("--disable-notifications");
            options.AddArgument("--disable-gpu");
            options.AddArgument("--disable-infobars");
            options.AddArgument("--disable-extensions");
            options.AddArgument("--disable-application-cache");
            options.AddArgument("--disable-dev-shm-usage");
            options.AddArgument("--window-size=1920,1080");
            options.AddArgument("--disable-blink-features=AutomationControlled");
            options.AddArgument("user-agent=Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/90.0.4430.212 Safari/537.36");
            options.AddArgument("--ignore-certificate-errors");

            options.AddUserProfilePreference("profile.default_content_setting_values.automatic_downloads", 1);
            options.AddUserProfilePreference("download.default_directory", _downloadPath);
            options.AddUserProfilePreference("savefile.default_directory", _downloadPath);
            options.AddUserProfilePreference("download.prompt_for_download", false);
            options.AddUserProfilePreference("download.directory_upgrade", true);

            options.AddUserProfilePreference("safebrowsing.enabled", true);
            options.AddUserProfilePreference("disable-popup-blocking", "true");

        
            //options.AddArgument("disable-popup-blocking");
            //options.add_experimental_option("prefs", prefs)

            Driver = new RemoteWebDriver(
                new Uri(_remoteUrl),
                options);
        }

Debugging Logs

[Capabilities {acceptInsecureCerts: true, browserName: chrome, goog:chromeOptions: {args: [--no-sandbox, --disable-notifications, --disable-gpu, --disable-infobars, --disable-extensions, --disable-application-cache, --disable-dev-shm-usage, --window-size=1920,1080, --disable-blink-features=Au..., user-agent=Mozilla/5.0 (Win..., --ignore-certificate-errors], prefs: {disable-popup-blocking: true, download.default_directory: /download/robot_1/tmp_txt, download.directory_upgrade: true, download.prompt_for_download: false, safebrowsing.enabled: true, savefile.default_directory: /download/robot_1/tmp_txt}}, se:downloadsEnabled: true, webSocketUrl: true}]
2026-07-10 12:13:16


17:13:16.068 INFO [LocalNode.newSession] - Using file system: /tmp/uuid13158725624210186930db21d581-1050-4f79-ab53-155c8b8c3687
2026-07-10 12:13:16


17:13:16.069 INFO [LocalNode.setDownloadsDirectory] - Using downloads folder: /tmp/uuid13158725624210186930db21d581-1050-4f79-ab53-155c8b8c3687/download4000331621100967802
2026-07-10 12:13:16


17:13:16.069 DEBUG [LocalNode.setDownloadsDirectory] - Adding to capabilities: {download.default_directory=/tmp/uuid13158725624210186930db21d581-1050-4f79-ab53-155c8b8c3687/download4000331621100967802, savefile.default_directory=/tmp/uuid13158725624210186930db21d581-1050-4f79-ab53-155c8b8c3687/download4000331621100967802, download.prompt_for_download=false}

[selenium-ci]

@Giorgio6846, thank you for creating this issue. We will troubleshoot it as soon as we can.

Selenium Triage Team: remember to follow the Triage Guide

[nvborisenko]

EnableDownloads = true

Meaning Grid manages download directory itself. To get downloadable files use specific API: https://www.selenium.dev/documentation/webdriver/drivers/remote_webdriver/#downloads

So the behavior is intentional.