npx playwright install hangs after the first browser download on Playwright 1.55 to 1.59 with recent Node releases

Symptom

The download reaches 100% and then the install prints nothing and never exitsCI jobs time out on the install step after a Node image bump to 26.x or 24.16The same Playwright version installs fine on node:24.15.0

Cause

Playwright before 1.60 unpacked browsers with a yauzl stream whose close event never fires under newer Node stream lifecycle behavior, so the extract step waits forever. Playwright 1.60 vendors a patched yauzl.

Fix

Upgrade Playwright to 1.60.0 or later. That is the only real fix, since the hang also appears on the Node 24 LTS line from 24.16.

ApplyCopy

npm i -D @playwright/test@^1.60.0 && npx playwright install --with-deps

Affected

Playwright 1.55.1 to 1.59.x on recent Node releases (26.x, 24.16 and later); fixed in 1.60.0 (released 2026-05-11)

Sources

• https://github.com/microsoft/playwright/issues/40724
• https://github.com/microsoft/playwright/issues/40998
• https://github.com/microsoft/playwright/pull/40747

Last verified 2026-10-15 · Confirmed by 0 builders