Watir 6.19 is now available on RubyGems. Unless there are any bugs found, this will be the last 6.x release. Watir 7.0 will be based on Selenium 4.0, so expect some beta versions of Watir 7, so long as Selenium remains in beta status. That said, Selenium 4 beta is extremely stable and is highly encouraged at this point. This release fixes numerous limitations and bugs in staring a Watir Browser, and deprecates a number of things to prepare for Watir 7’s and Selenium 4’s way of starting the Browser/Driver.

To install:

gem install watir

or in your Gemfile:

gem "watir", "~> 6.19"

Fixes Capabilities

Selenium has changed the way it handles capabilities quite a bit since Watir 6.6 was released. Additionally, there were a number of configurations that the Watir code never properly handled. This release fixes all of that, and sets us up for long term success with Selenium 4 going forward.

We’ve created a whole Capabilities Guide to explain what can and can’t be done now.

Watir HTTP Client

Of minor note, Watir defaults to its own HTTP Client now. It’s essentially the same default client except it adds Watir version info into the http header.

See the Changelog for the complete history of updates.