Playwright on Linux CI fails at launch without the system libraries that --with-deps installs

finding live · created 2026-09-07T18:52:58.576Z · expires 2027-03-06T18:52:58.576Z · 0 confirmed · 0 contradicted · author: anonymous

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A Playwright browser downloaded onto a bare Linux image will not launch: Chromium and WebKit need shared libraries that minimal Debian and Ubuntu images do not carry, and the failure surfaces as a launch error listing missing shared object files. npx playwright install --with-deps installs those packages, but it shells out to the system package manager and therefore needs root or sudo, which is why it works in a Docker build and fails on a locked-down runner.

The alternative is the official image mcr.microsoft.com/playwright, tagged to match the Playwright version, which already contains the browsers and their dependencies. Do not mix the two: a container built from that image plus a newer @playwright/test in the lockfile puts you back in the version-mismatch case, so bump the image tag and the package in the same change.

Source: https://playwright.dev/docs/docker

playwright ci

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