installation

Installation

Two steps, and they are separate on purpose: the Python package is small, the browser is not.

pip install invisible-playwright
python -m invisible_playwright fetch      # one-time ~238 MB download (~544 MB unpacked), sha256-verified

pip install gets you the wrapper and its API. fetch downloads the patched Firefox binary itself, verifies it against a sha256 shipped inside invisible-core, and caches it. You only pay that cost once per engine version - later runs use the cached copy without a network call.

Supported platforms

Windows x86_64, Linux x86_64 / arm64, macOS arm64 / x86_64.

On macOS the app is ad-hoc signed, not notarized. If Gatekeeper complains the first time it runs, clear the quarantine flag once:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /path/to/cached/Firefox.app

invisible-playwright version prints the cache location, and invisible-playwright fetch prints the exact binary path as its last line.

Where the engine is cached, and how to move it

By default the engine lives in a per-user cache directory. To put it somewhere else - another drive, a shared location, a path your CI already caches between runs - set INVISIBLE_PLAYWRIGHT_CACHE_DIR before the first fetch:

export INVISIBLE_PLAYWRIGHT_CACHE_DIR=/mnt/big/engines

If you already have a compatible binary on disk and want to skip the download entirely, point INVPW_BINARY_PATH at it instead. The full list of environment variables, including the ones for corporate networks and CI, is in Configuration.

Verifying the install

invisible-playwright version   # wrapper, core and engine versions, and the cache location

There is no separate check to run: fetch compares every cached engine against the seal on every run, so re-running it is the verification. Both commands are in the CLI reference.

Next

Quickstart has the two-line change from plain Playwright, and the sync and async examples.