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Browsers

Introduction​

Each version of Playwright needs specific versions of browser binaries to operate. You will need to use the Playwright CLI to install these browsers.

With every release, Playwright updates the versions of the browsers it supports, so that the latest Playwright would support the latest browsers at any moment. It means that every time you update Playwright, you might need to re-run the install CLI command.

Install browsers​

Playwright can install supported browsers. Running the command without arguments will install the default browsers.

pwsh bin/Debug/netX/playwright.ps1 install

You can also install specific browsers by providing an argument:

pwsh bin/Debug/netX/playwright.ps1 install webkit

See all supported browsers:

pwsh bin/Debug/netX/playwright.ps1 install --help

Install browsers via API​

It's possible to run Command line tools commands via the .NET API:

var exitCode = Microsoft.Playwright.Program.Main(new[] {"install"});
if (exitCode != 0)
{
    throw new Exception($"Playwright exited with code {exitCode}");
}

Install system dependencies​

System dependencies can get installed automatically. This is useful for CI environments.

pwsh bin/Debug/netX/playwright.ps1 install-deps

You can also install the dependencies for a single browser by passing it as an argument:

pwsh bin/Debug/netX/playwright.ps1 install-deps chromium

It's also possible to combine install-deps with install so that the browsers and OS dependencies are installed with a single command.

pwsh bin/Debug/netX/playwright.ps1 install --with-deps chromium

See system requirements for officially supported operating systems.

Configure Browsers​

Playwright can run tests on Chromium, WebKit and Firefox browsers as well as branded browsers such as Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. It can also run on emulated tablet and mobile devices. See the registry of device parameters for a complete list of selected desktop, tablet and mobile devices.

Run tests on different browsers​

Run tests on a specific browser:

dotnet test -- Playwright.BrowserName=webkit

To run your test on multiple browsers or configurations you need to invoke the dotnet test command multiple times. You can either specify the BROWSER environment variable or set the Playwright.BrowserName via the runsettings file:

dotnet test --settings:chromium.runsettings
dotnet test --settings:firefox.runsettings
dotnet test --settings:webkit.runsettings
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
  <RunSettings>
    <Playwright>
      <BrowserName>chromium</BrowserName>
    </Playwright>
  </RunSettings>

Chromium​

For Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and other Chromium-based browsers, by default, Playwright uses open source Chromium builds. Since the Chromium project is ahead of the branded browsers, when the world is on Google Chrome N, Playwright already supports Chromium N+1 that will be released in Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge a few weeks later.

Playwright ships a regular Chromium build for headed operations and a separate chromium headless shell for headless mode. See issue #33566 for details.

Optimize download size on CI​

If you are only running tests in headless mode, for example on CI, you can avoid downloading a regular version of Chromium by passing --only-shell during installation.

# only running tests headlessly
pwsh bin/Debug/netX/playwright.ps1 install --with-deps --only-shell

Opt-in to new headless mode​

You can opt into the new headless mode by using 'chromium' channel. As official Chrome documentation puts it:

New Headless on the other hand is the real Chrome browser, and is thus more authentic, reliable, and offers more features. This makes it more suitable for high-accuracy end-to-end web app testing or browser extension testing.

See issue #33566 for details.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RunSettings>
  <Playwright>
    <BrowserName>chromium</BrowserName>
    <LaunchOptions>
      <Channel>chromium</Channel>
    </LaunchOptions>
  </Playwright>
</RunSettings>
dotnet test -- Playwright.BrowserName=chromium Playwright.LaunchOptions.Channel=chromium

Google Chrome & Microsoft Edge​

While Playwright can download and use the recent Chromium build, it can operate against the branded Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge browsers available on the machine (note that Playwright doesn't install them by default). In particular, the current Playwright version will support Stable and Beta channels of these browsers.

Available channels are chrome, msedge, chrome-beta, msedge-beta, chrome-dev, msedge-dev, chrome-canary, msedge-canary.

warning

Certain Enterprise Browser Policies may impact Playwright's ability to launch and control Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. Running in an environment with browser policies is outside of the Playwright project's scope.

warning

Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge have switched to a new headless mode implementation that is closer to a regular headed mode. This differs from chromium headless shell that is used in Playwright by default when running headless, so expect different behavior in some cases. See issue #33566 fore details.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RunSettings>
  <Playwright>
    <BrowserName>chromium</BrowserName>
    <LaunchOptions>
      <Channel>msedge</Channel>
    </LaunchOptions>
  </Playwright>
</RunSettings>
dotnet test -- Playwright.BrowserName=chromium Playwright.LaunchOptions.Channel=msedge

Installing Google Chrome & Microsoft Edge​

If Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge is not available on your machine, you can install them using the Playwright command line tool:

pwsh bin/Debug/netX/playwright.ps1 install msedge
warning

Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge installations will be installed at the default global location of your operating system overriding your current browser installation.

Run with the --help option to see a full a list of browsers that can be installed.

When to use Google Chrome & Microsoft Edge and when not to?​

Defaults​

Using the default Playwright configuration with the latest Chromium is a good idea most of the time. Since Playwright is ahead of Stable channels for the browsers, it gives peace of mind that the upcoming Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge releases won't break your site. You catch breakage early and have a lot of time to fix it before the official Chrome update.

Regression testing​

Having said that, testing policies often require regression testing to be performed against the current publicly available browsers. In this case, you can opt into one of the stable channels, "chrome" or "msedge".

Media codecs​

Another reason for testing using official binaries is to test functionality related to media codecs. Chromium does not have all the codecs that Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge are bundling due to various licensing considerations and agreements. If your site relies on this kind of codecs (which is rarely the case), you will also want to use the official channel.

Enterprise policy​

Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge respect enterprise policies, which include limitations to the capabilities, network proxy, mandatory extensions that stand in the way of testing. So if you are part of the organization that uses such policies, it is easiest to use bundled Chromium for your local testing, you can still opt into stable channels on the bots that are typically free of such restrictions.

Firefox​

Playwright's Firefox version matches the recent Firefox Stable build. Playwright doesn't work with the branded version of Firefox since it relies on patches.

Note that availability of certain features, which depend heavily on the underlying platform, may vary between operating systems. For example, available media codecs vary substantially between Linux, macOS and Windows.

WebKit​

Playwright's WebKit is derived from the latest WebKit main branch sources, often before these updates are incorporated into Apple Safari and other WebKit-based browsers. This gives a lot of lead time to react on the potential browser update issues. Playwright doesn't work with the branded version of Safari since it relies on patches. Instead, you can test using the most recent WebKit build.

Note that availability of certain features, which depend heavily on the underlying platform, may vary between operating systems. For example, available media codecs vary substantially between Linux, macOS and Windows. While running WebKit on Linux CI is usually the most affordable option, for the closest-to-Safari experience you should run WebKit on mac, for example if you do video playback.

Install behind a firewall or a proxy​

By default, Playwright downloads browsers from Microsoft's CDN.

Sometimes companies maintain an internal proxy that blocks direct access to the public resources. In this case, Playwright can be configured to download browsers via a proxy server.

HTTPS_PROXY=https://192.0.2.1 pwsh bin/Debug/netX/playwright.ps1 install

If the requests of the proxy get intercepted with a custom untrusted certificate authority (CA) and it yields to Error: self signed certificate in certificate chain while downloading the browsers, you must set your custom root certificates via the NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS environment variable before installing the browsers:

export NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS="/path/to/cert.pem"

If your network is slow to connect to Playwright browser archive, you can increase the connection timeout in milliseconds with PLAYWRIGHT_DOWNLOAD_CONNECTION_TIMEOUT environment variable:

PLAYWRIGHT_DOWNLOAD_CONNECTION_TIMEOUT=120000 pwsh bin/Debug/netX/playwright.ps1 install

If you are installing dependencies and need to use a proxy on Linux, make sure to run the command as a root user. Otherwise, Playwright will attempt to become a root and will not pass environment variables like HTTPS_PROXY to the linux package manager.

sudo HTTPS_PROXY=https://192.0.2.1 pwsh bin/Debug/netX/playwright.ps1 install-deps

Download from artifact repository​

By default, Playwright downloads browsers from Microsoft's CDN.

Sometimes companies maintain an internal artifact repository to host browser binaries. In this case, Playwright can be configured to download from a custom location using the PLAYWRIGHT_DOWNLOAD_HOST env variable.

PLAYWRIGHT_DOWNLOAD_HOST=http://192.0.2.1 pwsh bin/Debug/netX/playwright.ps1 install

It is also possible to use a per-browser download hosts using PLAYWRIGHT_CHROMIUM_DOWNLOAD_HOST, PLAYWRIGHT_FIREFOX_DOWNLOAD_HOST and PLAYWRIGHT_WEBKIT_DOWNLOAD_HOST env variables that take precedence over PLAYWRIGHT_DOWNLOAD_HOST.

PLAYWRIGHT_FIREFOX_DOWNLOAD_HOST=http://203.0.113.3 PLAYWRIGHT_DOWNLOAD_HOST=http://192.0.2.1 pwsh bin/Debug/netX/playwright.ps1 install

Managing browser binaries​

Playwright downloads Chromium, WebKit and Firefox browsers into the OS-specific cache folders:

  • %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\ms-playwright on Windows
  • ~/Library/Caches/ms-playwright on macOS
  • ~/.cache/ms-playwright on Linux

These browsers will take a few hundred megabytes of disk space when installed:

du -hs ~/Library/Caches/ms-playwright/*
281M  chromium-XXXXXX
187M  firefox-XXXX
180M  webkit-XXXX

You can override default behavior using environment variables. When installing Playwright, ask it to download browsers into a specific location:

PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSERS_PATH=$HOME/pw-browsers pwsh bin/Debug/netX/playwright.ps1 install

When running Playwright scripts, ask it to search for browsers in a shared location.

PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSERS_PATH=$HOME/pw-browsers dotnet test

Playwright keeps track of packages that need those browsers and will garbage collect them as you update Playwright to the newer versions.

note

Developers can opt-in in this mode via exporting PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSERS_PATH=$HOME/pw-browsers in their .bashrc.

Stale browser removal​

Playwright keeps track of the clients that use its browsers. When there are no more clients that require a particular version of the browser, that version is deleted from the system. That way you can safely use Playwright instances of different versions and at the same time, you don't waste disk space for the browsers that are no longer in use.

To opt-out from the unused browser removal, you can set the PLAYWRIGHT_SKIP_BROWSER_GC=1 environment variable.

Uninstall browsers​

This will remove the browsers (chromium, firefox, webkit) of the current Playwright installation:

pwsh bin/Debug/netX/playwright.ps1 uninstall

To remove browsers of other Playwright installations as well, pass --all flag:

pwsh bin/Debug/netX/playwright.ps1 uninstall --all