@playwright/mcp

Bug Fixes

• browser_find takes filename to save matches to a file instead of the response (microsoft/playwright#42077). (microsoft/playwright#42968)
• browser_navigate and browser_reload report a dialog opened during page load instead of timing out (microsoft/playwright#42817). (microsoft/playwright#42908)
• The server no longer crashes when the browser is closed during a download (microsoft/playwright#42831). (microsoft/playwright#42922)
• browser_wait_for reports when time is capped at 30 seconds (#1767). (microsoft/playwright#42932)
• WebMCP tools no longer stay bound to a stale tab or frame (microsoft/playwright#42816). (microsoft/playwright#42821)
• WebMCP tool calls work with Chromium 155+. (microsoft/playwright#42915)
• Snapshots quote accessible names that look like regexes, e.g. "/home/" (microsoft/playwright#42807). (microsoft/playwright#42811)
• The Docker image reaps orphaned browser processes (#1769). (#1771)

✨ Highlights

• 🎬 Smooth 60 fps, styleable videos — browser_start_video (opt-in via --caps=devtools) takes fps, so fps: 60 records smooth 60 fps videos instead of the default 25, and cursor: true renders an animated mouse cursor that travels to each action point and stays visible between actions. browser_video_show_actions takes a style with point, highlight and title CSS declarations; the action point marker and the target highlight are now only shown when styled. (microsoft/playwright#42752, microsoft/playwright#42758)
• 🧰 WebMCP tools become real MCP tools — the tools a page registers through the WebMCP API now show up right in the tool list as webmcp_<tool>, with the page's own input schema and annotations, so an agent can call them directly and let the page do the work instead of driving its UI. The list follows the current tab, and clients get a tools/list_changed notification when it changes. This replaces browser_webmcp_list / browser_webmcp_call from v0.0.81, which are no longer exposed over MCP. Tool names, descriptions, schemas and results come from the page, so treat them as untrusted input. Pass --no-webmcp (config webmcp: false, env PLAYWRIGHT_MCP_WEBMCP=false) to opt out. WebMCP is experimental, see WebMCP in Chrome for how to enable it. (microsoft/playwright#42671)
• 🌗 Switch between light and dark color scheme (microsoft/playwright#42243) — an agent working on a dark theme had no way to see it mid-session. The new browser_emulate_media tool emulates media features on the fly: colorScheme, reducedMotion, forcedColors, contrast and the media type (screen / print). Omitted parameters are left unchanged, null clears an override. (microsoft/playwright#42668)
• 📁 Absolute paths in results (microsoft/playwright#42497) — links to snapshots, screenshots, console logs and downloads are relative to the workspace root, which a client without one cannot resolve. Pass --file-paths=absolute (config filePaths: "absolute", env PLAYWRIGHT_MCP_FILE_PATHS=absolute) to get absolute paths instead. (microsoft/playwright#42673)

🐛 Fixes

• fix(mcp): keep upload modal and reject bad headers — a failed browser_file_upload (e.g. a missing file) reports the error and keeps the file chooser open so it can be retried, and browser_route (opt-in via --caps=network) returns an error for a header that is not in the Name: Value form instead of setting a header named "". (microsoft/playwright#42713)
• fix(chromium): bypass service workers on the storage state page — browser_storage_state (opt-in via --caps=storage) no longer runs the site's own scripts, or fails when they redirect, for origins with an active service worker (microsoft/playwright#42656). (microsoft/playwright#42664, microsoft/playwright#42741)

📦 Upgrading

Configs that use @playwright/mcp@latest pick this release up on the next client restart. To pin it:

npx @playwright/mcp@0.0.82

What's New

🎉 New Tools

• browser_webmcp_list / browser_webmcp_call — List and call the tools a page registers through the WebMCP API, letting the page do the work instead of driving its UI. When a page has WebMCP tools, the page status reports how many are available (#42613). WebMCP is experimental, see WebMCP in Chrome for how to enable it.

Other Changes

• New --profile-dir-name <name> option (env PLAYWRIGHT_MCP_PROFILE_DIR_NAME) selects the Chrome profile to connect to in extension mode when the extension is installed in several profiles, for example "Profile 1" (#42527)
• Headless browsers launched by the server are now closed after one hour without tool calls; the next tool call launches a new one. Use --idle-timeout <ms> (config timeouts.idle, env PLAYWRIGHT_MCP_IDLE_TIMEOUT) to change the timeout, 0 disables it. Headed and attached browsers are not closed unless a timeout is set explicitly (#42663, #42676)
• --image-responses accepts only: a response that carries an image consists of the image parts alone, without the text part (#42672)

Bug Fixes

• browser_close returns an error when the browser context is shared (--shared-browser-context) instead of breaking the calling client's session. This supersedes the v0.0.80 change that dropped the backend after browser_close (#42495)
• With --shared-browser-context, browser_start_recording / browser_stop_recording (opt-in via --caps=devtools) keep each client's recording separate instead of delivering one client's recorded actions to another (#42622, #42627)
• The file access check follows symlinks, so a symlink inside the workspace can no longer be used to read or write files outside the allowed roots (#42628)
• Explicitly named output files in a nested directory (e.g. sub/shot.png) no longer fail with ENOENT; browser_file_upload and browser_drop resolve relative paths against the workspace root (#42540)
• In extension mode with PLAYWRIGHT_MCP_EXTENSION_TOKEN set, a connection that never completes (e.g. the token belongs to another Chrome profile) now fails after 30 seconds with a hint instead of hanging the tool call forever (#42525)
• Disable the Chromium sandbox by default on Linux for the bundled Chromium build, which lacks the setuid sandbox helper (#42490)

What's New

New Tools

• browser_start_recording / browser_stop_recording (opt-in via --caps=devtools) — Record actions that the user performs manually in the browser and return them as Playwright code. Useful when the user wants to demonstrate a flow instead of describing it (#42359)

Bug Fixes

• The default --codegen language is inferred from the environment (#42150)
• Honor --user-data-dir in extension mode (#42190)
• Do not treat orphaned browser preferences entries as an installed extension (#42224)
• browser_take_screenshot returns the original screenshot bytes instead of silently downscaling them to model-specific limits (#42406)
• Drop the cached browser backend after browser_close with a shared browser context, so subsequent tool calls from the same client no longer fail (#42365)
• When connected to a remote endpoint, browserInfo reports the browser actually running remotely instead of the configured one (#42228)
• Do not clobber the chromiumSandbox setting from the config file (#42288)
• Do not run the heartbeat for HTTP clients that have not opened an event stream (#42189)
• The internal /killkillkill endpoint is no longer registered outside of tests (#42133)

What's New

Tool Improvements

• browser_take_screenshot — WebP format — New type option to pick the image format (png, jpeg or webp); when unset, the format is inferred from the filename extension (#41152)
• --codegen — more languages — Code generation now supports python, java and csharp in addition to typescript (#42106)
• Configurable settle delay — New --timeout-settle flag (and timeouts.settle config option) to control how long to wait after each action for triggered work (navigations, requests) to settle, defaults to 500ms (#41924)

Fixes

• Aria snapshot capture is skipped when the response discards it (#41923)
• New --snapshot-boxes flag (and snapshot.boxes config option) to enable bounding boxes in snapshots globally — previously this was only available per command (#42102)
• Reconnect to the browser after a disconnect (#41966)
• Report malformed JSON config instead of silently falling back to INI parsing (#41909)
• Clear the dialog modal state when a dialog is closed out of band (#42032)
• Detect downloads via the download event instead of guessing from net::ERR_ABORTED navigation errors (#41933)
• Surface the missing executable path when a browser isn't installed (#41941)
• Escape user input in codegen output (#41962)
• Removed the stale --output-mode CLI option (#41833)

Browser Extension

• Validate Host and Origin headers on CDP relay WebSocket upgrades (#42103)
• Launch the Chrome profile that has the extension installed (#41939)
• Pass noDefaults for extension CDP connections (#42119)
• Mention PLAYWRIGHT_MCP_EXECUTABLE_PATH in the error shown when the browser executable is not found (#42122)
• Removed support for extension protocol v1 (#41857)

What's New

New Tools

• browser_find — Search the accessibility snapshot of the current page for text or a regular expression. Returns matching snapshot nodes with a few lines of surrounding context (like search snippets), which is cheaper than capturing the whole snapshot when you only need to locate an element and its ref (#41605, #41654)

Tool Improvements

• Less verbose snapshots — Accessibility snapshots are distilled to reduce noise and token usage (#41604)
• Mobile & device emulation — New --mobile flag and --device option to emulate mobile devices from the CLI (#41657)
• Navigation status — browser_navigate now surfaces non-2xx navigation status codes (#41589)

Bug Fixes

• browser_navigate no longer crashes the response when navigation closes the last tab (e.g. privileged pages like chrome://) (#41675)
• Await page initialization before taking a screenshot immediately after opening (#41646)
• Enable the chromium sandbox for the default browser (#41652)
• Preserve the configured output directory for additional tab videos (#41680)
• Always pass noDefaults for CDP connections so attaching no longer applies unwanted default context options (#41676)
• Close the isolated HTTP client context on disconnect (#41560)
• Wait for the client event stream before sending server→client requests (#41559)