Can't remove "What's New" tab from recent install of Chrome/ChromeDriver

Question

I recently had a new VM created for Windows 10 and our test automation suite.

After I got everything installed, I ran some of our tests. However, every single time that Selenium launches ChromeDriver, I still see the "What's New" / chrome://Whats-new tab in the browser, then our tests launch in a new tab. The tests seem to work just fine, however, if I do have a failing test, we take a desktop screenshot, and of course, all we see is the What's New tab, not our actual site-under-test.

I do not see the tab when launching Chrome manually, on any user that logs into the box. It only happens with the Selenium-ChromeDriver launched browsers. Even closing the tab while a test is running doesn't permanently remove that tab.

I have never encountered this problem with ChromeDriver before and it's a difficult question to search for answers.

Chrome / ChromeDriver versions: 98.0.4758.82 (which was released on 2/2, but it also happened on the previous version)

Has anyone solved this problem recently?

Answer 1

Try to use chromeOptions.AddArgument("--disable-features=ChromeWhatsNewUI");