Installation

• Managing browser binaries
• Download from artifact repository
• Skip browser downloads
• Download single browser binary

Managing browser binaries

Each version of Playwright needs specific versions of browser binaries to operate. By default 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

$ pip install playwright==1.8.0a1

$ python -m playwright install

These browsers will take few hundreds of megabytes of the 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:

# Linux/macOS

$ pip install playwright==1.8.0a1

$ PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSERS_PATH=$HOME/pw-browsers python -m playwright install

# Windows

$ set PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSERS_PATH=%USERPROFILE%\pw-browsers

$ pip install playwright==1.8.0a1

$ python -m playwright install

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

# Linux/macOS

$ PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSERS_PATH=$HOME/pw-browsers python playwright_script.js

# Windows

$ set PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSERS_PATH=%USERPROFILE%\pw-browsers

$ python playwright_script.py

Or you can opt into the hermetic install and place binaries under the site-packages/playwright folder:

# Linux/macOS

$ pip install playwright==1.8.0a1

$ PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSERS_PATH=0 python -m playwright install

# Windows

$ set PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSERS_PATH=0

$ pip install playwright==1.8.0a1

$ python -m playwright install

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.

Download from artifact repository

By default, Playwright downloads browsers from Microsoft and Google public CDNs.

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.

# Linux/macOS

$ pip install playwright==1.8.0a1

$ PLAYWRIGHT_DOWNLOAD_HOST=192.168.1.78 python -m playwright install

# Windows

$ set PLAYWRIGHT_DOWNLOAD_HOST=192.168.1.78

$ pip install playwright==1.8.0a1

$ python -m playwright 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.

# Linux/macOS

$ pip install playwright==1.8.0a1

$ PLAYWRIGHT_FIREFOX_DOWNLOAD_HOST=192.168.1.1 PLAYWRIGHT_DOWNLOAD_HOST=192.168.1.78 python -m playwright install

Skip browser downloads

In certain cases, it is desired to avoid browser downloads altogether because browser binaries are managed separately.

This can be done by setting PLAYWRIGHT_SKIP_BROWSER_DOWNLOAD variable before installation.

# Linux/macOS

$ pip install playwright==1.8.0a1

$ PLAYWRIGHT_SKIP_BROWSER_DOWNLOAD=1 python -m playwright install

# Windows

$ set PLAYWRIGHT_SKIP_BROWSER_DOWNLOAD=1

$ pip install playwright==1.8.0a1

$ python -m playwright install

Download single browser binary

Playwright downloads Chromium, Firefox and WebKit browsers by default. To install a specific browser, pass it as an argument during installation.

$ pip install playwright==1.8.0a1

$ python -m playwright install firefox