---
id: intro
title: "Getting Started"
---

<!-- TOC -->
- [Release notes](./release-notes.md)

## Installation

Install Microsoft.Playwright package from NuGet in Visual Studio or from the CLI in your project root directory:

```bash
dotnet add package Microsoft.Playwright
```

## Usage

```csharp
using Microsoft.Playwright;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

class Program
{
    public static async Task Main()
    {
        using var playwright = await Playwright.CreateAsync();
        await using var browser = await playwright.Chromium.LaunchAsync();
        // Create pages, interact with UI elements, assert values
    }
}
```

## First script

Create a console project and add the Playwright dependency.

```bash
dotnet new console -n pw_demo
cd pw_demo
dotnet add package Microsoft.Playwright --prerelease
```

Create a Program.cs that will navigate to `https://playwright.dev/dotnet` and take a screenshot in Chromium.

```csharp
using Microsoft.Playwright;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

class Program
{
    public static async Task Main()
    {
        using var playwright = await Playwright.CreateAsync();
        await using var browser = await playwright.Chromium.LaunchAsync();
        var page = await browser.NewPageAsync();
        await page.GotoAsync("https://playwright.dev/dotnet");
        await page.ScreenshotAsync(new PageScreenshotOptions { Path = "screenshot.png" });
    }
}
```

Now build it and run it.

```bash
dotnet build
dotnet run
```

By default, Playwright runs the browsers in headless mode. To see the browser UI, pass the `Headless = false` flag while launching the browser. You can also use [`option: slowMo`] to slow down execution. Learn more in the debugging tools [section](./debug.md).

```csharp
await playwright.Firefox.LaunchAsync(new BrowserTypeLaunchOptions { Headless = false, SlowMo = 50 });
```

## Record scripts

Command Line Interface [CLI](./cli.md) can be used to record user interactions and generate C# code.

```bash
# FIXME:
```

## System requirements

The browser binaries for Chromium, Firefox and WebKit work across the 3 platforms (Windows, macOS, Linux):

### Windows

Works with Windows and Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

### macOS

Requires 10.14 (Mojave) or above.

### Linux

Depending on your Linux distribution, you might need to install additional
dependencies to run the browsers.

:::note
Only Ubuntu 18.04 and Ubuntu 20.04 are officially supported.
:::

See also in the [Command Line Interface](./cli.md#install-system-dependencies)
which has a command to install all necessary dependencies automatically for Ubuntu
LTS releases.