Trywright

Try playwright without touching code — a local daemon that spins up a live browser session (via Playwright) with a web UI for interactive exploration, debugging, and scripting.

What is Trywright?

Trywright is a local control panel that lets you instantly explore any website through Playwright's eyes — no code, no IDE required.

Open the web UI at localhost:3333, launch a session pointed at any URL, and then:

• Live preview — see a real-time screenshot of the page inside a browser, tablet, or phone frame
• Interactive REPL — type Playwright expressions (page.title(), page.locator('h1').textContent()) and see the result instantly
• Console log capture — all console.log, console.error, and network errors from the page appear in the Console tab
• API reference — searchable cheatsheet with expandable examples, click any method to insert it into the REPL
• Multi-browser — switch between Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit
• Headed or headless — run in headless mode (preview in UI) or headed mode (interact with the desktop window directly)

Product vision mission and measure of success

Vision

A world where anyone — regardless of their experience with test automation — can instantly understand how Playwright sees and interacts with any website, without writing a single line of code.

Mission

Trywright is a local control panel that removes the barrier between curiosity about Playwright and actually understanding it. It gives developers, QA engineers, and anyone learning browser automation three things without touching a file, opening an IDE, or creating a project:

• See: launch any website in any Playwright-supported browser, headed or headless, and observe exactly what Playwright sees.
• Learn: explore the Playwright page API interactively through a live REPL wired to a real browser session. Build intuition through direct experience, not documentation.
• Understand: verify how a specific Playwright API command behaves under a specific combination of browser, operating system, and Playwright version — before committing to writing any test code.

What Trywright is not

Trywright deliberately sits at one moment in a developer's journey — before any test code exists. It is not a test runner, not a code generator, not a CI debugging tool, and not a replacement for Playwright's own codegen or UI mode. Those tools serve a later stage. Trywright serves the stage before them.

The measure of success

Someone who has never used Playwright should be able to install Trywright, open it, point it at a website they care about, and walk away twenty minutes later with a genuine understanding of what Playwright is and how its API works — without ever leaving their browser.

Installation

npm install -g trywright

Playwright browser binaries are installed automatically as part of the npm install. If the automatic step is skipped or fails, run it manually:

npx playwright install

Quick Start

# Start the daemon in the background
trywright start

# Open the UI — optionally pre-fill a URL
trywright open https://example.com

# Stop the daemon
trywright stop

The UI opens at http://localhost:3333.

CLI Commands

| Command | Description | |---|---| | trywright start | Start the daemon in the background | | trywright start --foreground | Start in the foreground (blocking) | | trywright stop | Stop the running daemon | | trywright open [url] | Open the UI in the browser (starts daemon if needed) | | trywright status | Show running daemon and active sessions | | trywright cleanup | Close all active Playwright sessions | | trywright uninstall | Stop the daemon and remove the login startup item | | trywright --version | Show version | | trywright --help | Show help |

REPL Examples

Once a session is active, try these in the REPL tab:

// Page metadata
page.title()
page.url()

// Finding elements
page.locator('h1').textContent()
page.locator('a').count()
page.locator('input[type="text"]').first().inputValue()

// Interactions
page.click('button[type="submit"]')
page.fill('#search', 'playwright')
page.keyboard.press('Enter')
page.mouse.wheel(0, 300)

// Navigation
page.goto('https://playwright.dev')
page.reload()
page.goBack()

// Evaluating in the browser
page.evaluate(() => document.querySelectorAll('a').length)
page.evaluate(() => window.innerWidth)

Session Modes

| Mode | Description | |---|---| | Headless | Browser runs invisibly; live screenshot streams to the preview pane | | Headed | A real browser window opens on your desktop; use it directly or via REPL |

Device Presets

Choose Desktop (1280×800), Tablet (768×1024), or Mobile (390×844) from the Config tab. The preview pane renders the matching browser, iPad, or iPhone frame.

Configuration

Trywright reads ~/.config/trywright/config.json. The file is created automatically on first run with defaults. Supported options:

{
  "port": 3333,
  "maxSessions": 3,
  "defaultMode": "headless",
  "defaultBrowser": "chromium",
  "screenshotFps": 10
}

| Option | Default | Description | |---|---|---| | port | 3333 | Port the daemon listens on | | maxSessions | 3 | Maximum concurrent Playwright sessions | | defaultMode | "headless" | Pre-selected mode when the UI loads ("headless" or "headed") | | defaultBrowser | "chromium" | Pre-selected browser when the UI loads ("chromium", "firefox", or "webkit") | | screenshotFps | 10 | Screenshot streaming rate in headless mode (frames per second) |

Troubleshooting

Playwright browsers not installed? Run npx playwright install after installing trywright.