any-browser

Test your website on Safari, Firefox, and Chrome — from any OS — with one command.

any-browser test safari
any-browser test chrome firefox
any-browser test all

Table of Contents

• Getting Started
• Usage
• What Are The Major Browsers?
• Running From Source Instead
• Troubleshooting

Getting Started

Install it globally from npm:

npm install -g any-browser

The first install downloads the Chrome, Firefox, and Safari (WebKit) engines via Playwright — that's a one-time ~300MB download, and you'll see exactly what's happening and why in your terminal. After that, every run is instant.

Usage

any-browser test <browser...> [options]

| Browser argument | Engine used | |---|---| | chrome | Chromium | | firefox | Firefox | | safari | WebKit | | all | all three |

Options:

• -u, --url <url> — URL to test (default: http://localhost:3000)
• --headless — run without opening a visible window

Examples:

any-browser test safari
any-browser test chrome firefox
any-browser test all --url https://example.com

🎇 Each browser opens in front of you, paused, so you can click around and inspect the page exactly like a real visitor would.

What Are The Major Browsers?

Ensuring your website looks great across all major browsers is crucial for a consistent user experience. any-browser covers Chrome, Firefox, and Safari regardless of your operating system — Linux, macOS, or Windows.

If we look at browser market share worldwide, Chrome dominates at around 64%, Safari follows with about 20%, and Firefox holds roughly 4%. While there are many other browsers, these three are critical because they use distinct rendering engines:

• Chrome (and Chromium-based browsers like Edge and Brave) use Blink.
• Firefox uses Gecko, developed by Mozilla.
• Safari uses WebKit, developed by Apple.

Since Safari is exclusive to macOS, testing it from Linux or Windows normally requires workarounds. any-browser sidesteps that entirely by using Playwright's open-source WebKit build, so any-browser test safari works identically on any OS.

Running From Source Instead

Prefer to clone and run it locally rather than install globally? That still works exactly like before:

git clone https://github.com/BhalliBhai/any-browser-cli.git
cd any-browser-cli
npm install
npm run test:safari   # or test:chrome / test:firefox

Troubleshooting

If you hit missing dependencies on Linux when running WebKit tests:

npx playwright install-deps webkit

If you see an error about missing libraries such as:

browserType.launch:
Host system is missing dependencies to run browsers.
Missing libraries:
  libpcre.so.3
  libicui18n.so.66
  libicuuc.so.66
  libwebp.so.6
  libenchant.so.1
  libffi.so.

Install the necessary system packages. On Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt-get install -y libpcre3 libicu66 libwebp6 libenchant1c2a libffi7

For other distributions, check your package manager's docs, or just run npx playwright install-deps and let Playwright figure it out.

If this helped, consider starring ⭐ the repository to support the project! 😊

Built by Bhalli B. — Full-Stack Developer & SaaS MVP Architect.