playwright/docs/src/intro-python.md

id	title
intro	Getting started

• Release notes

Installation

See system requirements.

Pip

pip install --upgrade pip
pip install playwright
playwright install

Conda

conda config --add channels conda-forge
conda config --add channels microsoft
conda install playwright
playwright install

These commands download the Playwright package and install browser binaries for Chromium, Firefox and WebKit. To modify this behavior see installation parameters.

Usage

Once installed, you can import Playwright in a Python script, and launch any of the 3 browsers (chromium, firefox and webkit).

from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright

with sync_playwright() as p:
    browser = p.chromium.launch()
    page = browser.new_page()
    page.goto("http://playwright.dev")
    print(page.title())
    browser.close()

Playwright supports two variations of the API: synchronous and asynchronous. If your modern project uses asyncio, you should use async API:

import asyncio
from playwright.async_api import async_playwright

async def main():
    async with async_playwright() as p:
        browser = await p.chromium.launch()
        page = await browser.new_page()
        await page.goto("http://playwright.dev")
        print(await page.title())
        await browser.close()

asyncio.run(main())

First script

In our first script, we will navigate to whatsmyuseragent.org and take a screenshot in WebKit.

from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright

with sync_playwright() as p:
    browser = p.webkit.launch()
    page = browser.new_page()
    page.goto("http://whatsmyuseragent.org/")
    page.screenshot(path="example.png")
    browser.close()

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.

firefox.launch(headless=False, slow_mo=50)

Record scripts

Command line tools can be used to record user interactions and generate Python code.

playwright codegen wikipedia.org

With Pytest

See here for Pytest instructions and examples.

Interactive mode (REPL)

Blocking REPL, as in CLI via Python directly:

python

>>> from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright
>>> playwright = sync_playwright().start()
# Use playwright.chromium, playwright.firefox or playwright.webkit
# Pass headless=False to launch() to see the browser UI
>>> browser = playwright.chromium.launch()
>>> page = browser.new_page()
>>> page.goto("http://whatsmyuseragent.org/")
>>> page.screenshot(path="example.png")
>>> browser.close()
>>> playwright.stop()

Async REPL such as asyncio REPL:

python -m asyncio

>>> from playwright.async_api import async_playwright
>>> playwright = await async_playwright().start()
>>> browser = await playwright.chromium.launch()
>>> page = await browser.new_page()
>>> await page.goto("http://whatsmyuseragent.org/")
>>> await page.screenshot(path="example.png")
>>> await browser.close()
>>> await playwright.stop()

Pyinstaller

You can use Playwright with Pyinstaller to create standalone executables.

# main.py
from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright

with sync_playwright() as p:
    browser = p.chromium.launch()
    page = browser.new_page()
    page.goto("http://whatsmyuseragent.org/")
    page.screenshot(path="example.png")
    browser.close()

If you want to bundle browsers with the executables:

PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSERS_PATH=0 playwright install chromium
pyinstaller -F main.py

set PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSERS_PATH=0
playwright install chromium
pyinstaller -F main.py

$env:PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSERS_PATH="0"
playwright install chromium
pyinstaller -F main.py

:::note Bundling the browsers with the executables will generate bigger binaries. It is recommended to only bundle the browsers you use. :::

Known issues

time.sleep() leads to outdated state

You should use page.wait_for_timeout(5000) instead of time.sleep(5) and it is better to not wait for a timeout at all, but sometimes it is useful for debugging. In these cases, use our wait method instead of the time module. This is because we internally rely on asynchronous operations and when using time.sleep(5) they can't get processed correctly.

incompatible with SelectorEventLoop of asyncio on Windows

Playwright runs the driver in a subprocess, so it requires ProactorEventLoop of asyncio on Windows because SelectorEventLoop does not supports async subprocesses.

On Windows Python 3.7, Playwright sets the default event loop to ProactorEventLoop as it is default on Python 3.8+.

Threading

Playwright's API is not thread-safe. If you are using Playwright in a multi-threaded environment, you should create a playwright instance per thread. See threading issue for more details.

System requirements

Playwright requires Python 3.7 or above. 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 tools which has a command to install all necessary dependencies automatically for Ubuntu LTS releases.