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Installation

Introduction​

Playwright Test is an end-to-end test framework for modern web apps. It bundles test runner, assertions, isolation, parallelization and rich tooling. Playwright supports Chromium, WebKit and Firefox on Windows, Linux and macOS, locally or in CI, headless or headed, with native mobile emulation for Chrome (Android) and Mobile Safari.

You will learn

Installing Playwright​

Get started by installing Playwright using one of the following methods.

Using npm, yarn or pnpm​

The command below either initializes a new project or adds Playwright to an existing one.

npm init playwright@latest

When prompted, choose / confirm:

  • TypeScript or JavaScript (default: TypeScript)
  • Tests folder name (default: tests, or e2e if tests already exists)
  • Add a GitHub Actions workflow (recommended for CI)
  • Install Playwright browsers (default: yes)

You can re-run the command later; it does not overwrite existing tests.

Using the VS Code Extension​

You can also create and run tests with the VS Code Extension.

What's Installed​

Playwright downloads required browser binaries and creates the scaffold below.

playwright.config.ts         # Test configuration
package.json
package-lock.json            # Or yarn.lock / pnpm-lock.yaml
tests/
  example.spec.ts            # Minimal example test
tests-examples/
  demo-todo-app.spec.ts      # Richer example tests

The playwright.config centralizes configuration: target browsers, timeouts, retries, projects, reporters and more. In existing projects dependencies are added to your current package.json.

tests/ contains a minimal starter test. tests-examples/ provides richer samples (e.g. a todo app) to explore patterns.

Running the Example Test​

By default tests run headless in parallel across Chromium, Firefox and WebKit (configurable in playwright.config). Output and aggregated results display in the terminal.

npx playwright test

Tips:

  • See the browser window: add --headed.
  • Run a single project/browser: --project=chromium.
  • Run one file: npx playwright test tests/example.spec.ts.
  • Open testing UI: --ui.

See Running Tests for details on filtering, headed mode, sharding and retries.

HTML Test Reports​

After a test run, the HTML Reporter provides a dashboard filterable by the browser, passed, failed, skipped, flaky and more. Click a test to inspect errors, attachments and steps. It auto-opens only when failures occur; open manually with the command below.

npx playwright show-report

Running the Example Test in UI Mode​

Run tests with UI Mode for watch mode, live step view, time travel debugging and more.

npx playwright test --ui

See the detailed guide on UI Mode for watch filters, step details and trace integration.

Updating Playwright​

Update Playwright and download new browser binaries and their dependencies:

npm install -D @playwright/test@latest
npx playwright install --with-deps

Check your installed version:

npx playwright --version

System requirements​

  • Node.js: latest 20.x, 22.x or 24.x.
  • Windows 10+, Windows Server 2016+ or Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).
  • macOS 14 (Ventura) or later.
  • Debian 12 / 13, Ubuntu 22.04 / 24.04 (x86-64 or arm64).

What's next​