playwright-chromium

packaged by Chainguard

Chainguard Container for playwright-chromium

Playwright web testing and automation framework with the Chromium browser only.

Chainguard Containers are regularly-updated, secure-by-default container images.

Download this Container Image

For those with access, this container image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/playwright-chromium:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard Registry.

Compatibility Notes

This image supports Chromium only. It provides the Playwright CLI (built with TypeScript on Node.js, tracking upstream v1.63.0) together with Chainguard's Chromium. It is intended as a drop-in replacement for mcr.microsoft.com/playwright for projects that test with Chromium. Tests that launch Firefox or WebKit (firefox.launch(), webkit.launch(), or Playwright projects that use them) fail in this image, and playwright install firefox or playwright install webkit downloads upstream builds that are not supported here.

The image matches upstream's runtime configuration: no entrypoint, a default command of /bin/bash, PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSERS_PATH=/ms-playwright, and Node.js 24 with npm, npx, yarn, corepack, git, and ssh. Like upstream, it runs as root and includes a pwuser user (UID 1001) for docker run --user pwuser. It also includes the fonts upstream installs (Liberation, FreeFont, Noto Color Emoji, IPA Gothic, WenQuanYi Zen Hei, and Loma) with a fontconfig setup (FONTCONFIG_FILE) that resolves them as upstream does, so pages render with the same fonts. One exception: in headless mode, upstream's separate headless shell renders Japanese with WenQuanYi Zen Hei, while this image renders it with IPA P Gothic, as upstream's full Chromium does. Projects that depend on @playwright/test at the matching version run with npx playwright test as they do upstream. The Playwright CLI is also installed globally as playwright.

Key differences from the upstream image:

• Chromium is installed from Chainguard packages rather than downloaded by playwright install. It is registered in /ms-playwright as a completed Playwright install of the matching revision, so the CLI and chromium.launch() work without executablePath, and playwright install chromium is a no-op.
• playwright install --with-deps is not supported, because it installs system packages with apt-get. The dependencies are already present, so run playwright install without --with-deps or skip it.
• Video recording (recordVideo) uses a Chainguard ffmpeg build with libvpx, registered where Playwright expects its own ffmpeg build.
• Xvfb and xvfb-run are included for headed browsers. xvfb-run hangs if it runs as PID 1, so pass --init to docker run when using it as the container command, as upstream recommends.

Getting Started

Check the installed Playwright version:

docker run --rm cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/playwright-chromium:latest playwright --version

Run a Playwright script from your project by mounting it into the container:

docker run --rm -v "$PWD:/work" -w /work \
  cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/playwright-chromium:latest \
  node script.js

To run a Playwright Test project, install its dependencies and run it in the container:

docker run --rm --init --ipc=host -v "$PWD:/work" -w /work \
  cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/playwright-chromium:latest \
  bash -c 'npm ci && npx playwright test --project=chromium'

Configuration

The image sets the following environment variables:

• LANG=C.UTF-8
• LC_ALL=C.UTF-8
• PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSERS_PATH=/ms-playwright
• FONTCONFIG_FILE=/usr/share/playwright/fontconfig/fonts.conf

Documentation and Resources

• Playwright documentation
• Playwright Docker guide
• Playwright source

Playwright is licensed under the Apache License 2.0.

What are Chainguard Containers?

Chainguard's free tier of Starter container images are built with Wolfi, our minimal Linux undistro.

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The main features of Chainguard Containers include:

• Minimal design, without unnecessary software bloat
• Daily builds to ensure container images are up-to-date with available security patches
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• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

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Need additional packages?

To improve security, Chainguard Containers include only essential dependencies. Need more packages? Chainguard customers can use Custom Assembly to add packages, either through the Console, chainctl, or API.

To use Custom Assembly in the Chainguard Console: navigate to the image you'd like to customize in your Organization's list of images, and click on the Customize image button at the top of the page.

Learn More

Refer to our Chainguard Containers documentation on Chainguard Academy. Chainguard also offers VMs and Libraries — contact us for access.

Trademarks

This software listing is packaged by Chainguard. The trademarks set forth in this offering are owned by their respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement by such companies.