API | FAQ | Contributing | Troubleshooting
Puppeteer is a Node library which provides a high-level API to control Chrome or Chromium over the DevTools Protocol. Puppeteer runs headless by default, but can be configured to run full (non-headless) Chrome or Chromium.
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 up-to-date, automated testing environment. Run your tests directly in the latest version of Chrome using the latest JavaScript and browser features.
- Capture a timeline trace of your site to help diagnose performance issues.
- Test Chrome Extensions.
Give it a spin: https://try-puppeteer.appspot.com/
To use Puppeteer in your project, run:
npm i puppeteer
# or "yarn add puppeteer"Note: When you install Puppeteer, it downloads a recent version of Chromium (~170MB Mac, ~282MB Linux, ~280MB Win) that is guaranteed to work with the API. To skip the download, see Environment variables.
Since version 1.7.0 we publish the puppeteer-core package,
a version of Puppeteer that doesn't download Chromium by default.
npm i puppeteer-core
# or "yarn add puppeteer-core"puppeteer-core is intended to be a lightweight version of Puppeteer for launching an existing browser installation or for connecting to a remote one. Be sure that the version of puppeteer-core you install is compatible with the
browser you intend to connect to.
See puppeteer vs puppeteer-core.
Note: Puppeteer requires at least Node v6.4.0, but the examples below use async/await which is only supported in Node v7.6.0 or greater.
Puppeteer will be familiar to people using other browser testing frameworks. You create an instance
of Browser, open pages, and then manipulate them with Puppeteer's API.
Example - navigating to https://example.com and saving a screenshot as example.png:
Save file as example.js
const puppeteer = require('puppeteer');
(async () => {
const browser = await puppeteer.launch();
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto('https://example.com');
await page.screenshot({path: 'example.png'});
await browser.close();
})();Execute script on the command line
node example.jsPuppeteer sets an initial page size to 800px x 600px, which defines the screenshot size. The page size can be customized with Page.setViewport().
Example - create a PDF.
Save file as hn.js
const puppeteer = require('puppeteer');
(async () => {
const browser = await puppeteer.launch();
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto('https://news.ycombinator.com', {waitUntil: 'networkidle2'});
await page.pdf({path: 'hn.pdf', format: 'A4'});
await browser.close();
})();Execute script on the command line
node hn.jsSee Page.pdf() for more information about creating pdfs.
Example - evaluate script in the context of the page
Save file as get-dimensions.js
const puppeteer = require('puppeteer');
(async () => {
const browser = await puppeteer.launch();
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto('https://example.com');
// Get the "viewport" of the page, as reported by the page.
const dimensions = await page.evaluate(() => {
return {
width: document.documentElement.clientWidth,
height: document.documentElement.clientHeight,
deviceScaleFactor: window.devicePixelRatio
};
});
console.log('Dimensions:', dimensions);
await browser.close();
})();Execute script on the command line
node get-dimensions.jsSee Page.evaluate() for more information on evaluate and related methods like evaluateOnNewDocument and exposeFunction.
1. Uses Headless mode
Puppeteer launches Chromium in headless mode. To launch a full version of Chromium, set the 'headless' option when launching a browser:
const browser = await puppeteer.launch({headless: false}); // default is true2. Runs a bundled version of Chromium
By default, Puppeteer downloads and uses a specific version of Chromium 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'});See Puppeteer.launch() 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 Chromium user profile which it cleans up on every run.