[Bug]: Test runner hangs indefinitely on `browser.close()` in macOS when using `channel: 'chrome'` due to inherited stdio pipes

[Tigran01]

Version

1.58.2

Steps to reproduce

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Be on a macOS device with standard Google Chrome installed.
2. Be on the latest Google Chrome version
3. Configure playwright.config.ts to use channel: 'chrome'.
4. Run a standard test suite.
5. Observe that after the tests finish executing, the terminal output stops. The parent process and test workers hang indefinitely instead of generating the report and exiting.

Expected behavior

The Playwright test runner should successfully resolve browser.close(), generate reports, and exit gracefully—even if macOS Chrome spawned background utility processes. Playwright should likely force-terminate or ignore the stdio pipes after the main spawned process PID actually exits, rather than w

Actual behavior

The worker process hangs waiting for the background GoogleSoftwareUpdate and chrome_crashpad_handler to end, keeping the test run from ever finishing.

Additional context

We debugged the hanging worker child processes and discovered that the Playwright Node.js worker event loop gets firmly parked in uv__io_poll.

1. When Playwright launches the system Chrome on Mac (channel: 'chrome'), Chrome automatically spawns detached background utility processes: GoogleSoftwareUpdate and chrome_crashpad_handler.

2. These detached background processes inherit the stdout/stderr file descriptors (UNIX pipes) that Playwright natively uses to monitor the browser.

3. During test teardown, Playwright sends the Browser.close command via CDP, and the main Chrome process successfully shuts down (no Chrome renderer/browser processes remain).

4. However, the background update and crashpad processes continue to run gracefully in the background, keeping the write ends of the stdio pipes open.

5. Because the pipes never close, Node.js's child_process.spawn() never emits the 'close' event. Playwright's worker waits indefinitely for EOF on these pipes, deadlocking the teardown sequence.

Environment

Playwright Version: 1.58.2
Chrome Version: 145.0.7632.160
Operating System: macOS 15.5
Node.js Version: v25
Browser: System Google Chrome (channel: 'chrome')

[yury-s]

The standard flags that playwright passes to Chrome disable the crashpad and autoupdate. I was not able to reproduce it, can you share exact repro that we could run locally to see the issue?

[Tigran01]

Hmm, there might be another condition as well then, I will test to figure out, since it's happening cosistently for me when I have channel: 'chrome'. Will get back to you when i find out more. Thanks for a quick reply!