[Feature] Consider splitting driver dependencies

The driver bundle is one big jar containing all the drivers for every supported platform. This makes it quite large, roughly 117 MB for v1.29.0.

The "driver-bundle" artifact could be changed to be only a very small artifact with runtime dependencies for each driver and platform. This would allow users to exclude drivers and platforms they don't need. For example, if someone only needs Chromium on Windows x86-64, Maven's method of excluding dependencies could be used to reduce the download size.

So, in the future, one could have a variant of "driver-bundle" that includes only the shared parts for all drivers and depends on "driver-chromium" (with shared parts for each platform), "driver-chromium-linux" (Linux parts only), and "driver-chromium-windows" (Windows parts only). "driver-chromium-linux" may also depend on "chromium-linux-x86-64" and "chromium-linux-arm64".

We contemplated having some filters for the driver deps in the past but were not satisfied with the mechanisms that Maven provides for defining platform-specific modules. Using exclusion in the client config sounds like an interesting alternative. It seems to be breaking what the package author assumes about the dependencies, so I'm not 100% sure we want to recommend that. I'll keep this request open to collect more feedback.

Note also that we only bundle driver binaries which include node executable and relevant playwright node.js code. All browsers are downloaded separately and only include those that are required for the host platform. See this page for more information on how playwright manages browser downloads.

For the time being you have to options to mitigate the proble:

Use preinstalled driver and configure the path via system property or
Configure playwright to use your own implementation of the Driver loader.

Thanks, I am overall happy with how Playwright works.

If you add the dependencies in "driver-bundle" as follows, then nothing changes for the users. "driver-bundle" is still sufficient as dependency and the new platform-specific dependencies are automatically loaded as transitive dependencies. The only difference is that now you have the possibility to exclude the unnecessary platform-specific dependencies. This would also be interesting for Node.js, where you have the possibility to use your own pre-installed version of Node.js since #1016. Especially in CI environments, where the images may already have Node.js, browser and drivers installed, this is a useful feature to save traffic and time.

<project>
  <parent>
    <groupId>com.microsoft.playwright</groupId>
    <artifactId>parent-pom</artifactId>
    <version>x.y.z</version>
  </parent>

  <artifactId>driver-bundle</artifactId>

  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>com.microsoft.playwright</groupId>
      <artifactId>driver</artifactId>
      <version>${project.version}</version>
      <scope>compile</scope>
    </dependency>
    <!-- new platform specific stuff comes here -->
    <dependency>
      <groupId>com.microsoft.playwright</groupId>
      <artifactId>driver-node-mac</artifactId>
      <version>${project.version}</version>
      <scope>runtime</scope>
    </dependency>
    <!-- new platform specific stuff ends here -->
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.junit.jupiter</groupId>
      <artifactId>junit-jupiter-engine</artifactId>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>
</project>

The current docker image is too large, and we only need to use chrome.

I have multimodule project.
I solve this problem with next trick:

Createed module without java code. Added playwright dependency and maven-assembly-plugin.

Added assembly.xml for maven plugin:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<assembly xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/ASSEMBLY/2.2.0"
          xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
          xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/ASSEMBLY/2.2.0 https://maven.apache.org/xsd/assembly-2.2.0.xsd">
    <id>exclude-playwright-drivers</id>
    <formats>
        <format>jar</format>
    </formats>
    <includeBaseDirectory>false</includeBaseDirectory>
    <dependencySets>
        <dependencySet>
            <unpack>true</unpack>
            <scope>runtime</scope>
            <outputDirectory>/</outputDirectory>
            <useProjectArtifact>true</useProjectArtifact>
            <unpackOptions>
                <excludes>
                    <exclude>driver/linux</exclude>
                    <exclude>driver/linux/**</exclude>
                    <exclude>driver/linux-arm64</exclude>
                    <exclude>driver/linux-arm64/**</exclude>
                    <exclude>driver/mac</exclude>
                    <exclude>driver/mac/**</exclude>
                    <exclude>driver/mac-arm64</exclude>
                    <exclude>driver/mac-arm64/**</exclude>
                </excludes>
            </unpackOptions>
        </dependencySet>
    </dependencySets>
</assembly>

Excluded what I do not need.
Excluded playwright dependencies from spring-boot-maven-plugin.

Added new module to main module dependencies list.

My final jar file reduced size from 200 MB to 60 MB

+1 here, bumping to version 1.55.0 has pushed us over the 512MB JAR limit for deploying to Beanstalk Java environment

val playwrightDriverBundle by configurations.creating {
    isCanBeConsumed = false
    isCanBeResolved = true
}

    implementation("com.microsoft.playwright:playwright:1.55.0")
    // Pull the driver-bundle artifact only for selective unpacking in bootJar
    playwrightDriverBundle("com.microsoft.playwright:driver-bundle:1.55.0")

// Configure bootJar to replace the full driver-bundle with a filtered version
tasks.named<BootJar>("bootJar") {
    val bundleProvider =
        provider {
            configurations
                .named("playwrightDriverBundle")
                .get()
                .files
                .first { it.extension == "jar" }
        }

    // Exclude the original full driver-bundle JAR from BOOT-INF/lib
    exclude { fileTreeElement ->
        fileTreeElement.path.contains("driver-bundle") && fileTreeElement.path.endsWith(".jar")
    }

    // Repack driver-bundle with only Mac and Linux drivers into BOOT-INF/lib
    from(provider { zipTree(bundleProvider.get()) }) {
        // Include all class files and META-INF (keeps DriverJar and other classes)
        include("com/**")
        include("META-INF/**")
        // Include only Mac and Linux platform drivers
        include("driver/mac/**")
        include("driver/linux/**")
        // Exclude documentation
        exclude("driver/**/README*", "driver/**/LICENSE*", "driver/**/NOTICE*")
        includeEmptyDirs = false
        into("BOOT-INF/classes/")
    }
}

Another +1. driver-bundle-1.53.0.jar is 194MB and only going to go up. We only run on mac-arm64 and linux, we don't need linux-arm64 or win32_x64 in there!

The driver packaging has been reworked to make the bundled Node.js optional.

What changed (#1936, ships in the next release): the platform-independent driver code (the playwright-core package) now lives in the driver artifact, while driver-bundle holds only the Node.js binaries.

There are now two ways to slim down the driver footprint, and I'd like to hear which fits your setup:

1. Bring your own Node.js (available now). If a Node.js is present on the host, set PLAYWRIGHT_NODEJS_PATH and exclude driver-bundle — no Node.js binaries are downloaded at all (~190 MB saved):

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.microsoft.playwright</groupId>
  <artifactId>playwright</artifactId>
  <version>...</version>
  <exclusions>
    <exclusion>
      <groupId>com.microsoft.playwright</groupId>
      <artifactId>driver-bundle</artifactId>
    </exclusion>
  </exclusions>
</dependency>

2. Per-platform split (in progress, #1935). driver-bundle is split per OS/arch so a build automatically pulls only the Node.js for its own platform (~1/5 of the current size) — zero config, no external Node.js needed.

Which would work better for you — relying on a preinstalled Node.js, or having the build bundle just your platform's Node.js automatically? Other scenarios welcome too.

Since v1.61 (#1936), the platform-independent driver code ships in the driver artifact and driver-bundle only contains the Node.js binaries. If Node.js is available on the host, exclude driver-bundle and set PLAYWRIGHT_NODEJS_PATH to skip downloading Node.js entirely (see the comment above).

Navigation Menu

Repository navigation

[Feature] Consider splitting driver dependencies #1196

Metadata

Assignees

Labels

Type

Projects

Milestone

Relationships

Development

[Feature] Consider splitting driver dependencies #1196

Description

Activity

yury-s commented on Feb 6, 2023

sephiroth-j commented on Feb 7, 2023

lin-mt commented on Sep 5, 2023

Tsyklop commented on Dec 25, 2023

iaculch commented on Oct 24, 2025

PhilipMorby commented on Jan 22, 2026

yury-s commented on Jun 19, 2026

yury-s commented on Oct 14, 2026

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

Labels

Type

Projects

Milestone

Relationships

Development

Issue actions