[Bug]: Playwright 1.57 - No way to use open-source Chromium, Chrome for Testing causes high memory usage (20GB+ per instance)

[andresalbertomoralesmitre]

Version

1.57.0

Steps to reproduce

After upgrading to Playwright 1.57, the browser now launches Chrome for Testing instead of the lightweight open-source Chromium used in earlier versions. This change dramatically increases memory usage and causes tests to crash under normal parallel execution.

**> What’s happening

Playwright always launches Chrome for Testing, even when the config explicitly requests Chromium.

The bundled browser located at
~/Library/Caches/ms-playwright/chromium-1200/chrome-mac-arm64/
is actually Google Chrome for Testing.app, not Chromium.

A single Chrome for Testing instance uses far more RAM than the previous Chromium builds.

With just 3 workers, each Chrome instance grows to ~20GB, pushing system load over 27 and triggering serious memory pressure.

Attempts to force Chromium (all unsuccessful)

browserName: 'chromium'

Removing device presets (e.g. devices['Desktop Chrome'])

Setting channel: undefined

Not specifying any channel at all

All of these still launch Chrome for Testing.

Workaround

Running tests with:

--project=firefox**

works normally and keeps memory usage stable. Firefox does not exhibit this high-memory behavior.

Request / Question

Is there any supported way in Playwright 1.57+ to use the actual open-source Chromium binary instead of Chrome for Testing?

Expected behavior

browserName: 'chromium' should launch open-source Chromium with reasonable memory usage.

Actual behavior

Chrome for Testing launches instead. Each instance uses ~20GB memory, causing system crashes with multiple workers.

Additional context

Config

import { defineConfig, devices } from '@playwright/test';

export default defineConfig({
  use: {
    browserName: 'chromium',
    launchOptions: {
      args: [
        '--disable-dev-shm-usage',
        '--disable-gpu',
        '--disable-extensions',
        '--disable-background-networking',
        '--disable-sync',
        '--disable-translate',
        '--no-first-run',
        '--disable-features=TranslateUI',
        '--js-flags=--max-old-space-size=512',
      ],
    },
  },

  // On CI → single worker, locally → 3 workers
  workers: process.env.CI ? 1 : 3,

  projects: [
    {
      name: 'chromium',
      use: { browserName: 'chromium' },
    },
  ],
});

Environment

System:
  OS: macOS 26.1
  CPU: (10) arm64 Apple M1 Pro
  Memory:  16.00 GB
Binaries:
  Node: 20.19.3
  Yarn: 1.22.22
  npm: 11.6.4
IDEs:
  VSCode: 2.1.50
Languages:
  Bash: 3.2.57
npmPackages:
  @playwright/test: 1.57.0 => 1.57.0 
  playwright: 1.57.0 => 1.57.0

[Skn0tt]

Hi Andres. Starting with v1.57, Playwright no longer provides a Chromium build, and fully uses Chrome for Testing instead. This is the first report we hear about high memory usage, and there's a chance this is a bug in Chrome. I see you're passing custom launch args, which we don't provide support for (see https://playwright.dev/docs/api/class-browsertype#browser-type-launch-option-args). Does the high memory usage also occur without custom launch args? If yes, please provide us with a reproduction case that we can investigate and potentially share with the Chromium team.

[gokultw]

I have also noticed this issue.
I usually run with 5 workers, and after the upgrade the tests are taking longer to complete. A test that used to finish in 3 minutes is now taking more than 10 minutes, and also tests are failing due to timeouts.

[Skn0tt]

We closely looked at our own test suite speeds, and Chrome for Testing didn't make a big difference in speed. When you look at your test reports, do you notice particular actions taking longer now, or is it just slower across the board? Ideally, if you could provide us with an example of a test that's taking longer in 1.57, we'd love to take a look. Also, maybe you could spot-check if switching to channel: "chrome" has an impact to speed for you, so we get a better picture of what's happening.

[Maaxion]

We've also experienced this issue in our CI. Running Vue 3.5 + Vite. Locally playwright runs fine, same tests on Jenkins CI ends up using up 20G+ of memory and crashes tests.

Our tests are exceedingly simple, as we bumped into this issue when we were setting up our CI:

  await page.goto('');

  await expect(page).toHaveTitle('Insert title');
  await expect(page.getByRole('heading', { name: 'insert heading' })).toBeVisible();

and

  await page.goto('');

  await page.getByRole('menuitem', { name: 'name here' }).click();
  await expect(page.getByRole('heading', { name: /some string/ })).toBeVisible();

[Skn0tt]

Thanks for the report. Sounds like a memory leak in Chrome for Testing. Could you provide us with a reproduction example that crashes on your Jenkins CI, and information about what operating system your CI is running?

[Maaxion]

I have limited access to the Jenkins server, I know it runs debian bookworm but precise version I do not know. Suspect its latest.

In our case running with --project=firefox does not prevent the OOM crash.

Tests are run using
playwright test --project=firefox

Running playwright 1.57.0

Issue is not reproducible on local dev machines. I can see after the holidays if I can spin up a separate debian bookworm machine to try to replicate this and get more information.

[Skn0tt]

If Firefox is also experiencing an OOM crash, then maybe it's not related to Chrome for Testing but something else. Were you also seeing these crashes on Playwright 1.56?