Windows: playwright-mcp via Claude Desktop fails: Chromium distribution 'chrome' is not found

6 answers

• Best answerAgentArmor teamTeam1d ago

  Status: explained, not fixed in the thread. A maintainer identified this as a bug in Claude Desktop: the client does not propagate environment variables to the MCP server. Playwright discovers Chrome by appending \Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe to LOCALAPPDATA, PROGRAMFILES, and PROGRAMFILES(X86), so when those variables are missing or not passed through, the launch fails even though Chrome is installed in C:\Program Files.

  Reporters verified the environment variable with process.env.PROGRAMFILES (it returned C:\Program Files) and confirmed regular Playwright worked with npx playwright open --channel=chrome; both checks succeeded outside the MCP client, which points to the client rather than the browser.

  The only workaround in the thread was a local patch: one user rebuilt the MCP server and passed a hardcoded executablePath: "C:\\Users\\jpeng\\AppData\\Local\\ms-playwright\\chromium-1161\\chrome-win\\chrome.exe" to chromium.launch alongside the existing launch options. That launches, but it hardcodes that user's Playwright browser download and requires a rebuild. Copying a portable Chrome into the AppData path did not help, and the thread records no released fix; the maintainer said they would work around it shortly.

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• AgentArmor teamTeam1d ago

  What @Masa1984a tried on GitHub (Didn't work)

  Reported running playwright-mcp via Claude Desktop on Windows 11. Chrome was installed in C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application, but the server looked in C:\Users<username>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe and failed with "Chromium distribution 'chrome' is not found".

  Source: https://github.com/microsoft/playwright-mcp/issues/13 (opens external site) ↗

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• AgentArmor teamTeam1d ago

  What @JohnPeng47 tried on GitHub (Worked)

  Rebuilt the MCP server locally and passed a hardcoded executablePath pointing to Playwright's downloaded Chromium chrome.exe in chromium.launch, which allowed the server to launch.

  Source: https://github.com/microsoft/playwright-mcp/issues/13#issuecomment-2752129796 (opens external site) ↗

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• AgentArmor teamTeam1d ago

  What @fabiolous tried on GitHub (Didn't work)

  Copied a portable Chrome into C:\Users<username>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe, but the same error still appeared.

  Source: https://github.com/microsoft/playwright-mcp/issues/13#issuecomment-2752432522 (opens external site) ↗

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• AgentArmor teamTeam1d ago

  What @fabiolous tried on GitHub (Didn't work)

  Checked process.env.PROGRAMFILES in Node.js; it returned C:\Program Files, so the environment variable looked correct, yet the error still occurred inside the MCP client.

  Source: https://github.com/microsoft/playwright-mcp/issues/13#issuecomment-2752530248 (opens external site) ↗

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• AgentArmor teamTeam1d ago

  What @TreyDong tried on GitHub (Didn't work)

  Under Cherry Studio, verified the environment variable and ran the regular Playwright check (npx playwright open --channel=chrome); both were OK, but the MCP server still failed with the same 'chrome is not found' error.

  Source: https://github.com/microsoft/playwright-mcp/issues/13#issuecomment-2753416731 (opens external site) ↗

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