# Installing Puppeteer: A Comprehensive Guide

Puppeteer is an incredibly powerful and versatile Node.js library that provides a simple yet robust API for automating web browsers like Google Chrome. In this article, we'll walk you through the process of downloading and installing Puppeteer on your system.

## Step 1 - Set up Environment Variables

Before proceeding with the actual installation, it's essential to set some environment variables correctly:

* `PUPPETEERSKIPCHROMIUMDOWNLOAD`: This variable determines whether or not to download ChromeDriver (the corresponding executable for Google Chrome) alongside Puppeteer. By default, this is set to false.

* Set it to true if you already have the necessary executables installed on your system.

* `PUPPETEEREXECUTABLEPATH`: If you've chosen to download and use a specific version of the Chromium executable (instead of using the one bundled with Puppeteer), this variable should point towards that path.

## Step 2 - Install Using npm or yarn

Once these variables are set up correctly, you can proceed to install Puppeteer itself. You have two options here:

### Option A: Installing via npm

```bash

npm i puppeteer@1.0.3 --save-dev # replace version number with the one that suits your needs.

```

Or, if you prefer yarn (which is generally recommended due to its better dependency management features):

```bash

yarn add puppeteer@1.0.3 --dev # replace version number with the one that suits your needs.

```

## Step 4 - Importing Puppeteer

After successfully installing Puppeteer via npm or yarn, you can now import it into your Node.js application using:

```javascript

const { launch } = require('puppeteer');

```

## Congratulations! You have now successfully installed and set up Puppetier in your project. With this powerful library at your disposal, the possibilities are truly endless when it comes to automating web browsers programmatically.

For more detailed information about using puppeteers API or troubleshooting common issues, please refer to our official documentation:

Puppeteer docs download