Installing Cypress

What you'll learn

How to install Cypress via npm
How to install Cypress via direct download
How to version and run Cypress via package.json

First, make sure you have all the system requirements.

Installing

`npm install`

Install Cypress via npm:

cd /your/project/path

npm install cypress --save-dev

This will install Cypress locally as a dev dependency for your project.

Make sure that you have already run npm init or have a node_modules folder or package.json file in the root of your project to ensure cypress is installed in the correct directory.

Notice that the Cypress npm package is a wrapper around the Cypress binary. The version of the npm package determines the version of the binary downloaded. As of version 3.0, the binary is downloaded to a global cache directory to be used across projects.

System proxy properties http_proxy, https_proxy and no_proxy are respected for the download of the Cypress binary. You can also use the npm properties npm_config_proxy and npm_config_https_proxy. Those have lower priority, so they will only be used if the system properties are being resolved to not use a proxy.

Best Practice

The recommended approach is to install Cypress with npm because:

Cypress is versioned like any other dependency.
It simplifies running Cypress in Continuous Integration.

`yarn add`

Installing Cypress via yarn:

cd /your/project/path

yarn add cypress --dev

System proxy properties http_proxy, https_proxy and no_proxy are respected for the download of the Cypress binary.

Direct download

If you're not using Node or npm in your project or you want to try Cypress out quickly, you can always download Cypress directly from our CDN.

Recording runs to Cypress Cloud is not possible from the direct download. This download is only intended as a quick way to try out Cypress. To record tests to Cypress Cloud, you'll need to install Cypress as an npm dependency.

The direct download will always grab the latest available version. Your platform will be detected automatically.

Then you can manually unzip and double click. Cypress will run without needing to install any dependencies.

Direct downloading for old versions

It is possible to download an old version from our CDN by suffixing the URL with the desired version (ex. https://download.cypress.io/desktop/6.8.0).

Advanced Installation

If you have more complex requirements, want to level-up your Cypress workflow or just need help with troubleshooting, check out our Advanced Installation reference.

Continuous integration

Please read our Continuous Integration docs for help installing Cypress in CI. When running in Linux you'll need to install some system dependencies or you can use our Docker images which have everything you need prebuilt.

System requirements

Operating System

Cypress is a desktop application that is installed on your computer. The desktop application supports these operating systems:

macOS 10.9 and above (Intel or Apple Silicon 64-bit (x64 or arm64))
Linux Ubuntu 12.04 and above, Fedora 21 and Debian 8 (x86_64 or Arm 64-bit (x64 or arm64)) (see Linux Prerequisites down below)
Windows 7 and above (64-bit only)

Node.js

If you're using npm to install Cypress, we support:

Node.js 14.x
Node.js 16.x
Node.js 18.x and above

Cypress generally aligns with Node's release schedule.

Hardware

When running Cypress locally, it should run comfortably on any machine that is capable of modern web development.

When running Cypress in CI, however, some of the lower-tier configurations might not be able to run Cypress reliably, especially when recording videos or doing longer test runs.

Some issues you might run into in CI that could be a sign of insufficient resources are:

Exiting early during cypress run or abruptly closing (“crashing”)
Frozen or missing frames in the video that is captured
Increased runtime

When running Cypress in CI, we recommend that you have the following hardware requirements:

CPU

2 CPUs minimum to run Cypress
1 additional CPU if video recording is enabled
1 additional CPU per process you run outside of Cypress, such as:
- App server (frontend)
- App server (backend)
- App database
- Any additional infrastructure (Redis, Kafka, etc..)

Memory

4GB minimum, 8GB+ for longer test runs

Linux Prerequisites

If you're using Linux, you'll want to have the required dependencies installed on your system.

Ubuntu/Debian

apt-get install libgtk2.0-0 libgtk-3-0 libgbm-dev libnotify-dev libgconf-2-4 libnss3 libxss1 libasound2 libxtst6 xauth xvfb

CentOS

yum install -y xorg-x11-server-Xvfb gtk2-devel gtk3-devel libnotify-devel GConf2 nss libXScrnSaver alsa-lib

Docker

Docker images with all of the required dependencies installed are available under cypress/base

If you're running your projects in containers, then you'll want Cypress in the container with the Node.js process.

  ui:
    image: cypress/base:latest
    # if targeting a specific node version, use e.g.
    # image: cypress/base:14

cypress/base is a drop-in replacement for base docker node images.

Great, now install Cypress!

Next Steps

Open the app and take it for a test drive!