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Troubleshooting

Browser dependencies​

Playwright does self-inspection every time it runs to make sure the browsers can be launched successfully. If there are missing dependencies, playwright will print instructions to acquire them.

See also in the browsers doc which has a command to install all necessary dependencies automatically for Ubuntu LTS releases.

Code transpilation issues​

If you are using a JavaScript transpiler like babel or TypeScript, calling evaluate() with an async function might not work. This is because while playwright uses Function.prototype.toString() to serialize functions while transpilers could be changing the output code in such a way it's incompatible with playwright.

Some workarounds to this problem would be to instruct the transpiler not to mess up with the code, for example, configure TypeScript to use latest ECMAScript version ("target": "es2018"). Another workaround could be using string templates instead of functions:

await page.evaluate(`(async() => {
   console.log('1');
})()`);

Node.js requirements​

Playwright requires Node.js version 14 or above

ReferenceError: URL is not defined​

Playwright requires Node.js 14 or higher.

Unknown file extension ".ts"​

Running TypeScript tests in "type": "module" project requires Node.js 16 or higher.

Incompatible Microsoft Edge / Google Chrome policy settings​

It's known that Playwright is not working as expected when some Microsoft Edge / Google Chrome policy settings are set. The following shows some of them, there might be more that affect Playwright's functionalities. If you find any other policy settings that break functionality, please file an issue and we'll add it to this document. You can see a list of applied policies by running chrome://policy in the browser.

  • BrowserSignin - This policy may prevent Playwright from launching the browser without signing in. Playwright will fail to launch browser if the policy forces users to sign-in to use the browser. See discussion in this bug
  • ExtensionInstallForcelist - This policy is used to specify a list of extensions that should be installed. Playwright's browser close will not work if this policy is set. See discussion in this bug.
  • UserDataDir - This policy is used to specify the location of the user data directory. Playwright uses a temporary directory for user data, so this policy is not compatible with Playwright. See discussion in this bug.

WebKit Web Inspector​

Launching WebKit Inspector during the execution will prevent the Playwright script from executing any further and will reset pre-configured user agent and device emulation.

This is a known limitation.

System requirements​

The browser binaries for Chromium, Firefox and WebKit work across the 3 platforms (Windows, macOS, Linux):

Windows​

Works with Windows 10+, Windows Server 2016+ and Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

macOS​

Requires 12 (Monterey) or above.

Linux​

Depending on your Linux distribution, you might need to install additional dependencies to run the browsers.

note

Only Debian 11, Ubuntu 20.04 and 22.04 are officially supported.

See also in the browsers doc which has a command to install all necessary dependencies automatically for Ubuntu LTS releases.