Keep Colab Alive

A selenium script to keep Google Colaboratory sessions running for longer and automate it (to some extent).

Features

• Keeps clicking on status indicator to keep colab alive
• Executes given cells if not already running

Requirements

• Python 3 (testing with 3.7.5, should work with other python 3 versions)
• selenium (see requirements.txt for version)
• Firefox web browser

Usage

Requires Python3 with selenium installed through pip. Run using python3 keep_colab_alive.py.

See python3 keep_colab_alive.py --help for the help page.

Arguments are taken through environment variables, if they are not set you will be prompted to enter them. Currently available arguments:

• FIREFOX_PROFILE: The path to your Firefox profile through which you have logged in to Google. You can get the path by going to about:profiles in the Firefox URL bar. I suggest you create a new profile since a new profile starts up much faster than a bloated/old profile.
• COLAB_URL: Link to the colab
• COLAB_CELLS: Comma separated list of cell IDs to execute. (see below on how to get the IDs)

To the cell IDs, run the script with the -c flag like python3 keep_colab_alive.py -c. This will be show all the cells along with their IDs and some of the content.

Feel free to open an issue if there is any problem.

TODO

• Connect to runtime and execute all cells if runtime gets disconnected.
• More command line arguments
• Ask user input only in interactive mode

Open an issue if you want to suggest a feature.