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.

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npm init playwright@latest

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yarn create playwright

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pnpm create playwright

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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.

bash

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

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.

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.

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npx playwright test

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yarn playwright test

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pnpm exec playwright test

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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.

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npx playwright show-report

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yarn playwright show-report

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pnpm exec playwright show-report

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Running the Example Test in UI Mode

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

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npx playwright test --ui

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yarn playwright test --ui

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pnpm exec playwright test --ui

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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:

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

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yarn add --dev @playwright/test@latest
yarn playwright install --with-deps

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pnpm install --save-dev @playwright/test@latest
pnpm exec playwright install --with-deps

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Check your installed version:

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npx playwright --version

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yarn playwright --version

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pnpm exec playwright --version

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System requirements

Node.js: latest 20.x, 22.x or 24.x.
Windows 11+, Windows Server 2019+ or Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).
macOS 14 (Ventura) or later.
Debian 12 / 13, Ubuntu 22.04 / 24.04 (x86-64 or arm64).

Introduction

Installing Playwright

Using npm, yarn or pnpm

Using the VS Code Extension

What's Installed

Running the Example Test

HTML Test Reports

Running the Example Test in UI Mode

Updating Playwright

System requirements

What's next