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Puppeteer
Guides | API | FAQ | Contributing | Troubleshooting
Puppeteer is a Node.js library which provides a high-level API to control Chrome/Chromium over the DevTools Protocol. Puppeteer runs in headless mode by default, but can be configured to run in full ("headful") Chrome/Chromium.
What can I do?
Most things that you can do manually in the browser can be done using Puppeteer! Here are a few examples to get you started:
- Generate screenshots and PDFs of pages.
- Crawl a SPA (Single-Page Application) and generate pre-rendered content (i.e. "SSR" (Server-Side Rendering)).
- Automate form submission, UI testing, keyboard input, etc.
- Create an automated testing environment using the latest JavaScript and browser features.
- Capture a timeline trace of your site to help diagnose performance issues.
- Test Chrome Extensions.
Getting Started
Installation
To use Puppeteer in your project, run:
npm i puppeteer
# or using yarn
yarn add puppeteer
# or using pnpm
pnpm i puppeteer
When you install Puppeteer, it automatically downloads a recent version of
Chrome for Testing (~170MB macOS, ~282MB Linux, ~280MB Windows) and a chrome-headless-shell binary (starting with Puppeteer v21.6.0) that is guaranteed to
work
with Puppeteer. The browser is downloaded to the $HOME/.cache/puppeteer folder
by default (starting with Puppeteer v19.0.0). See configuration for configuration options and environmental variables to control the download behavor.
If you deploy a project using Puppeteer to a hosting provider, such as Render or
Heroku, you might need to reconfigure the location of the cache to be within
your project folder (see an example below) because not all hosting providers
include $HOME/.cache into the project's deployment.
For a version of Puppeteer without the browser installation, see
puppeteer-core.
If used with TypeScript, the minimum supported TypeScript version is 4.7.4.
Configuration
Puppeteer uses several defaults that can be customized through configuration files.
For example, to change the default cache directory Puppeteer uses to install
browsers, you can add a .puppeteerrc.cjs (or puppeteer.config.cjs) at the
root of your application with the contents
const {join} = require('path');
/**
* @type {import("puppeteer").Configuration}
*/
module.exports = {
// Changes the cache location for Puppeteer.
cacheDirectory: join(__dirname, '.cache', 'puppeteer'),
};
After adding the configuration file, you will need to remove and reinstall
puppeteer for it to take effect.
See the configuration guide for more information.
puppeteer-core
For every release since v1.7.0 we publish two packages:
puppeteer is a product for browser automation. When installed, it downloads
a version of Chrome, which it then drives using puppeteer-core. Being an
end-user product, puppeteer automates several workflows using reasonable
defaults that can be customized.
puppeteer-core is a library to help drive anything that supports DevTools
protocol. Being a library, puppeteer-core is fully driven through its
programmatic interface implying no defaults are assumed and puppeteer-core
will not download Chrome when installed.
You should use puppeteer-core if you are
connecting to a remote browser
or managing browsers yourself.
If you are managing browsers yourself, you will need to call
puppeteer.launch with
an explicit
executablePath
(or channel if it's
installed in a standard location).
When using puppeteer-core, remember to change the import:
import puppeteer from 'puppeteer-core';
Usage
Puppeteer follows the latest maintenance LTS version of Node.
Puppeteer will be familiar to people using other browser testing frameworks. You launch/connect a browser, create some pages, and then manipulate them with Puppeteer's API.
For more in-depth usage, check our guides and examples.
Example
The following example searches developer.chrome.com for blog posts with text "automate beyond recorder", click on the first result and print the full title of the blog post.
import puppeteer from 'puppeteer';
(async () => {
// Launch the browser and open a new blank page
const browser = await puppeteer.launch();
const page = await browser.newPage();
// Navigate the page to a URL
await page.goto('https://developer.chrome.com/');
// Set screen size
await page.setViewport({width: 1080, height: 1024});
// Type into search box
await page.type('.devsite-search-field', 'automate beyond recorder');
// Wait and click on first result
const searchResultSelector = '.devsite-result-item-link';
await page.waitForSelector(searchResultSelector);
await page.click(searchResultSelector);
// Locate the full title with a unique string
const textSelector = await page.waitForSelector(
'text/Customize and automate'
);
const fullTitle = await textSelector?.evaluate(el => el.textContent);
// Print the full title
console.log('The title of this blog post is "%s".', fullTitle);
await browser.close();
})();
Default runtime settings
1. Uses Headless mode
By default Puppeteer launches Chrome in the Headless mode.
const browser = await puppeteer.launch();
// Equivalent to
const browser = await puppeteer.launch({headless: true});
Before v22, Puppeteer launched the old Headless mode by default.
The old headless mode is now known as
chrome-headless-shell
and ships as a separate binary. chrome-headless-shell does not match the
behavior of the regular Chrome completely but it is currently more performant
for automation tasks where the complete Chrome feature set is not needed. If the performance
is more important for your use case, switch to chrome-headless-shell as following:
const browser = await puppeteer.launch({headless: 'shell'});
To launch a "headful" version of Chrome, set the
headless to false
option when launching a browser:
const browser = await puppeteer.launch({headless: false});
2. Runs a bundled version of Chrome
By default, Puppeteer downloads and uses a specific version of Chrome so its
API is guaranteed to work out of the box. To use Puppeteer with a different
version of Chrome or Chromium, pass in the executable's path when creating a
Browser instance:
const browser = await puppeteer.launch({executablePath: '/path/to/Chrome'});
You can also use Puppeteer with Firefox. See status of cross-browser support for more information.
See
this article
for a description of the differences between Chromium and Chrome.
This article
describes some differences for Linux users.
3. Creates a fresh user profile
Puppeteer creates its own browser user profile which it cleans up on every run.
Using Docker
See our Docker guide.
Using Chrome Extensions
See our Chrome extensions guide.
Resources
Contributing
Check out our contributing guide to get an overview of Puppeteer development.