puppeteer-core
Advanced tools
The puppeteer-core package is a version of Puppeteer, a Node library which provides a high-level API to control headless Chrome or Chromium over the DevTools Protocol. It is intended to be a lightweight version that can be used when you want to bring your own browser. It does not download any browsers by default, unlike the full puppeteer package.
Page Automation
Automate and control a web page, including navigation, screenshot taking, and DOM manipulation.
const puppeteer = require('puppeteer-core');
(async () => {
const browser = await puppeteer.launch({executablePath: '/path/to/your/Chrome'});
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto('https://example.com');
await page.screenshot({path: 'example.png'});
await browser.close();
})();Form Submission
Automate form submissions by typing into fields and clicking buttons.
const puppeteer = require('puppeteer-core');
(async () => {
const browser = await puppeteer.launch({executablePath: '/path/to/your/Chrome'});
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto('https://example.com/login');
await page.type('#username', 'myUsername');
await page.type('#password', 'myPassword');
await page.click('#submit');
await page.waitForNavigation();
await browser.close();
})();Web Scraping
Extract data from web pages by running JavaScript in the context of the page.
const puppeteer = require('puppeteer-core');
(async () => {
const browser = await puppeteer.launch({executablePath: '/path/to/your/Chrome'});
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto('https://example.com');
const data = await page.evaluate(() => {
return document.querySelector('h1').textContent;
});
console.log(data);
await browser.close();
})();PDF Generation
Generate PDFs of web pages for offline viewing or archiving.
const puppeteer = require('puppeteer-core');
(async () => {
const browser = await puppeteer.launch({executablePath: '/path/to/your/Chrome'});
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto('https://example.com', {waitUntil: 'networkidle0'});
await page.pdf({path: 'example.pdf', format: 'A4'});
await browser.close();
})();Automated Testing
Perform automated testing on web applications, including end-to-end tests, performance testing, and more.
const puppeteer = require('puppeteer-core');
(async () => {
const browser = await puppeteer.launch({executablePath: '/path/to/your/Chrome', headless: false});
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto('https://example.com');
// Perform various tests, like checking if a button exists
const buttonExists = await page.$('button') !== null;
console.assert(buttonExists, 'Button should exist on the page');
await browser.close();
})();Playwright is a Node library to automate the Chromium, WebKit, and Firefox browsers with a single API. It is similar to puppeteer-core but provides support for multiple browsers out of the box. It also offers additional features like network interception and emulation capabilities.
Selenium WebDriver is one of the most well-known tools for automated web testing. It supports multiple browsers and languages, making it a versatile choice for web automation. Compared to puppeteer-core, Selenium is more mature and has a larger community but can be slower and more complex to set up.
Nightmare is a high-level browser automation library. It is built on top of Electron, which is a framework for creating native applications with web technologies. Nightmare is designed to be simpler and more approachable than Puppeteer, but it is less powerful and only works with Electron's version of Chromium.
Cypress is a front-end testing tool built for the modern web. It is both a library for writing automated tests and a test runner that can execute them. Cypress is more focused on testing than general browser automation and provides a rich interactive interface for developing tests.
Puppeteer is a Node.js library which provides a high-level API to control Chrome/Chromium over the DevTools Protocol. Puppeteer runs in headless mode by default, but can be configured to run in full (non-headless) Chrome/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:
To use Puppeteer in your project, run:
npm i puppeteer
# or `yarn add puppeteer`
# or `pnpm i puppeteer`
When you install Puppeteer, it automatically downloads a recent version of Chromium (~170MB macOS, ~282MB Linux, ~280MB Windows) that is guaranteed to work with Puppeteer. For a version of Puppeteer without installation, see puppeteer-core.
Puppeteer looks for certain environment variables for customizing behavior. If Puppeteer doesn't find them in the environment during the installation step, a lowercased variant of these variables will be used from the npm config.
HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY, NO_PROXY - defines HTTP proxy settings that are used to download and run the browser.PUPPETEER_CACHE_DIR - defines the directory to be used by Puppeteer for caching. Defaults to os.homedir()/.cache/puppeteer.PUPPETEER_SKIP_CHROMIUM_DOWNLOAD - do not download bundled Chromium during installation step.PUPPETEER_TMP_DIR - defines the directory to be used by Puppeteer for creating temporary files. Defaults to os.tmpdir().PUPPETEER_DOWNLOAD_HOST - specifies the URL prefix that is used to download Chromium. Note: this includes protocol and might even include path prefix. Defaults to https://storage.googleapis.com.PUPPETEER_DOWNLOAD_PATH - specifies the path for the downloads folder. Defaults to <cache>/chromium, where <cache> is Puppeteer's cache directory.PUPPETEER_BROWSER_REVISION - specifies a certain version of the browser you'd like Puppeteer to use. See puppeteer.launch on how executable path is inferred.PUPPETEER_EXECUTABLE_PATH - specifies an executable path to be used in puppeteer.launch.PUPPETEER_PRODUCT - specifies which browser you'd like Puppeteer to use. Must be either chrome or firefox. This can also be used during installation to fetch the recommended browser binary. Setting product programmatically in puppeteer.launch supersedes this environment variable.PUPPETEER_EXPERIMENTAL_CHROMIUM_MAC_ARM — specify Puppeteer download Chromium for Apple M1. On Apple M1 devices Puppeteer by default downloads the version for Intel's processor which runs via Rosetta. It works without any problems, however, with this option, you should get more efficient resource usage (CPU and RAM) that could lead to a faster execution time.Environment variables except for PUPPETEER_CACHE_DIR are not used for puppeteer-core since core does not automatically handle browser downloading.
puppeteer-coreEvery release since v1.7.0 we publish two packages:
puppeteer is a product for browser automation. When installed, it downloads a version of
Chromium, which it then drives using puppeteer-core. Being an end-user product, puppeteer supports a bunch of convenient PUPPETEER_* env variables to tweak its behavior.
puppeteer-core is a library to help drive anything that supports DevTools protocol. puppeteer-core doesn't download Chromium when installed. Being a library, puppeteer-core is fully driven through its programmatic interface.
You should only use puppeteer-core if you are connecting to a remote browser or managing browsers yourself. If you are managing browsers yourself, you will need to call puppeteer.launch with an explicit executablePath or channel.
When using puppeteer-core, remember to change the import:
import puppeteer from 'puppeteer-core';
Puppeteer follows the latest maintenance LTS version of Node.
Puppeteer will be familiar to people using other browser testing frameworks. You launch/connect a browser, create some pages, and then manipulate them with Puppeteer's API.
For more in-depth usage, check our guides and examples.
The following example searches developers.google.com/web for articles tagged "Headless Chrome" and scrape results from the results page.
import puppeteer from 'puppeteer';
(async () => {
const browser = await puppeteer.launch();
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto('https://developers.google.com/web/');
// Type into search box.
await page.type('.devsite-search-field', 'Headless Chrome');
// Wait for suggest overlay to appear and click "show all results".
const allResultsSelector = '.devsite-suggest-all-results';
await page.waitForSelector(allResultsSelector);
await page.click(allResultsSelector);
// Wait for the results page to load and display the results.
const resultsSelector = '.gsc-results .gs-title';
await page.waitForSelector(resultsSelector);
// Extract the results from the page.
const links = await page.evaluate(resultsSelector => {
return [...document.querySelectorAll(resultsSelector)].map(anchor => {
const title = anchor.textContent.split('|')[0].trim();
return `${title} - ${anchor.href}`;
});
}, resultsSelector);
// Print all the files.
console.log(links.join('\n'));
await browser.close();
})();
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 true
2. 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'});
You can also use Puppeteer with Firefox Nightly (experimental support). 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 browser user profile which it cleans up on every run.
See our guide on using Docker.
See our guide on using Chrome extensions.
Check out our contributing guide to get an overview of Puppeteer development.
FAQs
A high-level API to control headless Chrome over the DevTools Protocol
The npm package puppeteer-core receives a total of 6,291,546 weekly downloads. As such, puppeteer-core popularity was classified as popular.
We found that puppeteer-core demonstrated a healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released less than a year ago. It has 2 open source maintainers collaborating on the project.
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