Openclaw unable to open browser

[spring gazelle]

Openclaw says browser is loaded but cannot interact with it.
Playwright isnt available in this gateway build

[lucid eagle]

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[violet ginkgo]

That usually means the browser plugin loaded, but your Gateway install does not have full Playwright support.

So in this state, browser can still do some things:

• ARIA snapshots
• basic page screenshots

But these will not work without Playwright:

• navigate
• act / click / type interactions
• AI or role snapshots
• element screenshots
• PDF export

Per docs, the fix is to install the full Playwright package (not just playwright-core) and then restart the gateway, or reinstall OpenClaw with browser support.

Can you paste these so I can narrow it down?

openclaw --version
openclaw status --all
openclaw browser status

Also, are you running OpenClaw via Docker or a normal local install?

Docs:

• https://docs.openclaw.ai/tools/browser#playwright-requirement
• https://docs.openclaw.ai/gateway/troubleshooting

[spring gazelle]

Openclaw is normal install
OpenClaw 2026.4.21 (f788c88)

Config: /home/pootah/.openclaw/openclaw.json
✓ Secret diagnostics (0)
✓ Restart sentinel: none
✓ Skills: 6 eligible · 0 missing · /home/pootah/.openclaw/workspace
✓ Plugin compatibility (none)
✓ Channel issues (none)

profile: openclaw
enabled: true
running: true
transport: cdp
cdpPort: 18800
cdpUrl: http://127.0.0.1:18800
browser: unknown
detectedBrowser: chrome
detectedPath: /usr/bin/google-chrome
profileColor: #FF4500

[violet ginkgo]

Nice, this narrows it down a lot.

Your browser setup itself looks fine:

• enabled: true
• running: true
• CDP is up on 127.0.0.1:18800
• Chrome was detected at /usr/bin/google-chrome

So this is not a Chrome path / browser.enabled problem.

This looks like the Playwright interaction layer is missing from the install, so OpenClaw can launch/see the browser but cannot do interactive actions.

I’d try this in order:

openclaw update

openclaw doctor
openclaw gateway restart

Then test browser interaction again.

If it still says Playwright is not available in this gateway build, do a repair reinstall of the normal install:

curl -fsSL https://openclaw.ai/install.sh | bash

If that still fails, please paste the output from:

openclaw logs --follow

Then trigger one browser action once, and grab the first browser / Playwright error lines.

Docs:

• https://docs.openclaw.ai/tools/browser#playwright-requirement
• https://docs.openclaw.ai/install/updating
• https://docs.openclaw.ai/gateway/troubleshooting

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