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Android

Playwright has experimental support for Android automation. This includes Chrome for Android and Android WebView.

Requirements

  • Android device or AVD Emulator.
  • ADB daemon running and authenticated with your device. Typically running adb devices is all you need to do.
  • Chrome 87 or newer installed on the device
  • "Enable command line on non-rooted devices" enabled in chrome://flags.

Known limitations

  • Raw USB operation is not yet supported, so you need ADB.
  • Device needs to be awake to produce screenshots. Enabling "Stay awake" developer mode will help.
  • We didn't run all the tests against the device, so not everything works.

How to run

An example of the Android automation script would be:

const { _android: android } = require('playwright');

(async () => {
  // Connect to the device.
  const [device] = await android.devices();
  console.log(`Model: ${device.model()}`);
  console.log(`Serial: ${device.serial()}`);
  // Take screenshot of the whole device.
  await device.screenshot({ path: 'device.png' });

  {
    // --------------------- WebView -----------------------

    // Launch an application with WebView.
    await device.shell('am force-stop org.chromium.webview_shell');
    await device.shell('am start org.chromium.webview_shell/.WebViewBrowserActivity');
    // Get the WebView.
    const webview = await device.webView({ pkg: 'org.chromium.webview_shell' });

    // Fill the input box.
    await device.fill({ res: 'org.chromium.webview_shell:id/url_field' }, 'github.com/microsoft/playwright');
    await device.press({ res: 'org.chromium.webview_shell:id/url_field' }, 'Enter');

    // Work with WebView's page as usual.
    const page = await webview.page();
    await page.waitForNavigation({ url: /.*microsoft\/playwright.*/ });
    console.log(await page.title());
  }

  {
    // --------------------- Browser -----------------------

    // Launch Chrome browser.
    await device.shell('am force-stop com.android.chrome');
    const context = await device.launchBrowser();

    // Use BrowserContext as usual.
    const page = await context.newPage();
    await page.goto('https://webkit.org/');
    console.log(await page.evaluate(() => window.location.href));
    await page.screenshot({ path: 'page.png' });

    await context.close();
  }

  // Close the device.
  await device.close();
})();

Note that since you don't need Playwright to install web browsers when testing Android, you can omit browser download via setting the following environment variable when installing Playwright:

PLAYWRIGHT_SKIP_BROWSER_DOWNLOAD=1 npm i -D playwright

android.devices([options])​

Added in: v1.9
  • options? <Object>
    • host? <string> Optional host to establish ADB server connection. Default to 127.0.0.1. Added in: v1.22#
    • omitDriverInstall? <boolean> Prevents automatic playwright driver installation on attach. Assumes that the drivers have been installed already. Added in: v1.21#
    • port? <number> Optional port to establish ADB server connection. Default to 5037. Added in: v1.20#
  • returns: <Promise<Array<AndroidDevice>>>#

Returns the list of detected Android devices.

android.setDefaultTimeout(timeout)​

Added in: v1.9
  • timeout <number> Maximum time in milliseconds#
  • returns: <void>#

This setting will change the default maximum time for all the methods accepting timeout option.