Selenium Chrome Driver: unable to set user-data-dir (MODERATORS DO NOT SET AS DUPLICATE) : ***MODERATORS, PLESE DO NOT MARK THIS QUESTION AS DUPLICATE AS NONE OF THE ANSWERS IN SIMILAR QUESTION WORK AND I WOULD LIKE TO START A BOUNTY FOR THIS QUESTION - THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT FOR ME THANK YOU.***

I'm setting the user director to be my default User data directory as such (so I don't have to worry about entering passwords to sites and logging in each time):

    from selenium import webdriver
    options = webdriver.ChromeOptions()
    options.add_argument("--user-data-dir=~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/Default/")
    browser = webdriver.Chrome(options=options, executable_path=r"chromedriver")
    browser.get('https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/')
    print browser.desired_capabilities

Now I would expect my Gmail to come up but it asks me to sign in.

Further, when I print the desired capabilities it appears that the user data directory has NOT been set at all:

> {u'takesScreenshot': True, u'acceptSslCerts': True,
> u'networkConnectionEnabled': False, u'mobileEmulationEnabled': False,
> u'unexpectedAlertBehaviour': u'', u'applicationCacheEnabled': False,
> u'locationContextEnabled': True, u'rotatable': False, u'chrome':
> {u'chromedriverVersion': u'2.29.461585
> (0be2cd95f834e9ee7c46bcc7cf405b483f5ae83b)', **u'userDataDir':
> u'/var/folders/2r/twg_2d4j5cnf2d6k1m_mnx4c0000gn/T/.org.chromium.Chromium.ihUqp7'}**,
> u'hasTouchScreen': False, u'platform': u'Mac OS X', u'version':
> u'70.0.3538.110', u'nativeEvents': True, u'handlesAlerts': True,
> u'takesHeapSnapshot': True, u'javascriptEnabled': True,
> u'databaseEnabled': False, u'browserName': u'chrome',
> u'webStorageEnabled': True, u'browserConnectionEnabled': False,
> u'cssSelectorsEnabled': True, u'pageLoadStrategy': u'normal'}

I am on the latest version of Selenium (3.141) and ChromeDriver (2.29.461585)

Before answering, please reproduce and resolve locally using code above.

***MODERATORS, PLESE DO NOT MARK THIS QUESTION AS DUPLICATE AS NONE OF THE ANSWERS IN SIMILAR QUESTION WORK AND I WOULD LIKE TO START A BOUNTY FOR THIS QUESTION - THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT FOR ME THANK YOU.***