Chrome 136+ cannot be driven over CDP with the default user-data-dir profile

TL;DR

If browser-use cannot attach to your real Chrome profile on Chrome 136+, copy your Default profile folder into a different directory and pass that new path as the user data dir in the browser config.

Steps

1. If browser-use cannot attach to your real Chrome profile on Chrome 136+, copy your Default profile folder into a different directory and pass that new path as the user data dir in the browser config. Do not point it at the live default profile - Chrome refuses the CDP connection when another instance owns it. Close all existing Chrome instances before starting in debug mode, and use plain Chromium if you do not need the saved profile (cookies, logins, cache).

Expected: A maintainer confirmed the team is working on profile support and gave the interim workaround.

When to use

You are seeing this: Do not point it at the live default profile - Chrome refuses the CDP connection when another instance owns it. Use this skill when you run into "Chrome 136+ cannot be driven over CDP with the default user-data-dir profile".

When not to use

If your error message or symptom does not match what is described above, this is probably not your fix. Search for your exact error text instead of forcing this one to fit.

Versions

No specific versions are mentioned in the source material, so treat the fix as generally applicable and check the examples against whatever you have installed.

Why this happens

The original report does not dig into a root cause. It documents the symptom and the fix that resolved it.

Source: Issue browser-use/browser-use#1520 (closed, 36 comments): Chrome v136 and newer can no longer be driven over CDP while using the default user-data-dir profile, so browser-use fails to connect to a real Chrome profile with a connection-refused style error. It works with plain Chromium. A maintainer confirmed the team is working on profile support and gave the interim workaround.

Verified resolution: If browser-use cannot attach to your real Chrome profile on Chrome 136+, copy your Default profile folder into a different directory and pass that new path as the user data dir in the browser config. Do not point it at the live default profile - Chrome refuses the CDP connection when another instance owns it. Close all existing Chrome instances before starting in debug mode, and use plain Chromium if you do not need the saved profile (cookies, logins, cache).

Source URL: https://github.com/browser-use/browser-use/issues/1520