Playwright tests in Github actions error for webkit with "host system is missing dependencies to run browsers"

Question

When doing Playwright (v1.47) tests on webkit in Github actions, I suddenly get an error: Error: browserType.launch: Host system is missing dependencies to run browsers.

The runner is using Ubuntu 24.04 (due to ubuntu-latest) and neither chromium nor firefox show this error.

The full error message is as follows:

 1) [webkit] › pages/index.spec.ts:4:5 › The landing page › contains an organism ──────────────────

    Error: browserType.launch: 
    ╔══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
    ║ Host system is missing dependencies to run browsers. ║
    ║ Missing libraries:                                   ║
    ║     libicudata.so.70                                 ║
    ║     libicui18n.so.70                                 ║
    ║     libicuuc.so.70                                   ║
    ║     libvpx.so.7                                      ║
    ╚══════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝

How to fix this issue?

Answer 1

This error appears to be happening for a lot of people who are using Ubuntu 24.04 and playwright 1.47, see recent comments on this issue, e.g. https://github.com/microsoft/playwright/issues/30368#issuecomment-2412418303

There appear to be 2 options to fix it:

• Upgrade Playwright to 1.48 or,
• Downgrade Ubuntu to 22.04.

I tried upgrading and it worked. Others seem to have successfully pinned Ubuntu instead.