Browser installation fails on first run

[KostasDimakis]

Problem Description

OS: MacOS

When running MCP Playwright for the first time after installing it, the browser installation process fails.

Reproduction Steps

1. Fresh install of MCP Playwright on VSC using the button from the repo.
2. No projects opened.
3. Run the MCP server so the tools are discovered (default settings).
4. Write "Navigate to playwright mcp github repo and star it" on copilot.
5. Failure occurs during browser_install step.

Error message:

Error: Failed to install browser:
╔═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║ WARNING: It looks like you are running 'npx playwright install' without first ║
║ installing your project's dependencies.                                       ║
║                                                                               ║
║ To avoid unexpected behavior, please install your dependencies first, and     ║
║ then run Playwright's install command:                                        ║
║                                                                               ║
║     npm install                                                               ║
║     npx playwright install                                                    ║
║                                                                               ║
║ If your project does not yet depend on Playwright, first install the          ║
║ applicable npm package (most commonly @playwright/test), and                  ║
║ then run Playwright's install command to download the browsers:               ║
║                                                                               ║
║     npm install @playwright/test                                              ║
║     npx playwright install                                                    ║
║                                                                               ║
╚═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝
Switching to root user to install dependencies...
sudo: a terminal is required to read the password; either use the -S option to read from standard input or configure an askpass helper
sudo: a password is required
Failed to install browsers
Error: Failed to install chrome

What else I've tried:

• Installed browsers manually.
• Tried following the steps on a fake project by installing @playwright/test first.

I'm unsure how to resolve this.

[mxschmitt]

Have you tried installing Google Chrome manually on your system? Looks like our automated install fails. You can use a different browser shown here.

[KostasDimakis]

I've tried npx playwright install manually. It installed all browsers. Yet the agent browser_install kept saying the same thing.

[KostasDimakis]

I have a spare Windows machine and out of curiosity I tried the same steps and the same error happened.

[mxschmitt]

Could you share your MCP config with us? Also maybe the output of this? npm list -g. Its interesting that it happens for you on your Windows machine as well - so it makes me believe that there might be something wrong with how you set it up.

In theory there should be no manual npx playwright install needed - MCP installs the browser and picks Google Chrome as a default.

[pavelfeldman]

Playwright MCP uses the locally installed Chrome by default. You can specify a different browser using --browser= command. To make sure default settings work, make sure you have Chrome installed. Otherwise, you can specify --browser=chromium to use the browsers that Playwright bundles. Then it'll look it up / install it in the default location Playwright installs the browsers.

[KostasDimakis]

Thanks @pavelfeldman. My Chrome installation was specific to this user: ~/Applications . I pointed to that executable, and it worked great.