playwright-start

Start a long-running Playwright browser server via CLI.

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🙋‍♂️ Why?

When developing browser automation scripts, there's a lot of overhead in browser start up every time you test a change.

Start a long-running browser server in a separate window and connect to it from your script to iterate faster! The CLI also comes with a REPL to help you quickly test code.

🚀 Install

npm i -D playwright-start

🚦 Quick Setup

1. Start a browser server from a separate terminal session:

   npx playwright-start

2. Connect from your code:

   import {
       ChromiumBrowser,
       devices,
   } from 'playwright'
   import connect from 'playwright-start'
   
   (async () => {
       const browser = await connect<ChromiumBrowser>()
   
       const context = await browser.newContext({
           // Emulate Pixel 2 XL
           ...devices['Pixel 2 XL']
       })
   
       const page = await context.newPage()
   
       // ...
   })()

👨‍🏫 Examples

Starting a non-headless Chromium server

npx playwright-start --headless=false

Starting a Firefox or Webkit server

Firefox:

npx playwright-start firefox

Webkit:

npx playwright-start webkit