Advanced Installation

Environment variables

Install binary

Using the CYPRESS_INSTALL_BINARY environment variable, you can control how Cypress is installed. To override what is installed, you set CYPRESS_INSTALL_BINARY alongside the npm install command.

This is helpful if you want to:

• Install a version different than the default npm package. shell CYPRESS_INSTALL_BINARY=2.0.1 npm install cypress@2.0.3
• Specify an external URL (to bypass a corporate firewall). shell CYPRESS_INSTALL_BINARY=https://company.domain.com/cypress.zip npm install cypress
• Specify a file to install locally instead of using the internet. shell CYPRESS_INSTALL_BINARY=/local/path/to/cypress.zip npm install cypress

In all cases, the fact that the binary was installed from a custom location is not saved in your package.json file. Every repeated installation needs to use the same environment variable to install the same binary.

Skipping installation

You can also force Cypress to skip the installation of the binary application by setting CYPRESS_INSTALL_BINARY=0. This could be useful if you want to prevent Cypress from downloading the Cypress binary at the time of npm install.

CYPRESS_INSTALL_BINARY=0 npm install

Now Cypress will skip its install phase once the npm module is installed.

Binary cache

As of version 3.0, Cypress downloads the matching Cypress binary to the global system cache, so that the binary can be shared between projects. By default, global cache folders are:

• MacOS: ~/Library/Caches/Cypress
• Linux: ~/.cache/Cypress
• Windows: /AppData/Local/Cypress/Cache

To override the default cache folder, set the environment variable CYPRESS_CACHE_FOLDER.

CYPRESS_CACHE_FOLDER=~/Desktop/cypress_cache npm install

CYPRESS_CACHE_FOLDER=~/Desktop/cypress_cache npm run test

Cypress will automatically replace the ~ with the user's home directory. So you can pass CYPRESS_CACHE_FOLDER as a string from CI configuration files, for example:

environment:
  CYPRESS_CACHE_FOLDER: '~/.cache/Cypress'

See also Continuous Integration - Caching section in the documentation.

Run binary

Setting the environment variable CYPRESS_RUN_BINARY overrides where the npm module finds the Cypress binary.

CYPRESS_RUN_BINARY should be a path to an already unzipped binary executable. The Cypress commands open, run, and verify will then launch the provided binary.

Mac

CYPRESS_RUN_BINARY=~/Downloads/Cypress.app/Contents/MacOS/Cypress cypress run

Linux

CYPRESS_RUN_BINARY=~/Downloads/Cypress/Cypress cypress run

Windows

CYPRESS_RUN_BINARY=~/Downloads/Cypress/Cypress.exe cypress run

Download URLs

If you want to download a specific Cypress version for a given platform (Operating System), you can get it from our CDN.

The download server URL is https://download.cypress.io.

We currently have the following downloads available:

• Windows 64-bit (?platform=win32&arch=x64)
• Linux 64-bit (?platform=linux)
• macOS 64-bit (?platform=darwin)

Here are the available download URLs:

See https://download.cypress.io/desktop.json for all available platforms.

Example of downloading Cypress 3.0.0 for Windows 64-bit:

https://download.cypress.io/desktop/3.0.0?platform=win32&arch=x64

Mirroring

If you choose to mirror the entire Cypress download site, you can specify CYPRESS_DOWNLOAD_MIRROR to set the download server URL from https://download.cypress.io to your own mirror.

For example:

CYPRESS_DOWNLOAD_MIRROR="https://www.example.com" cypress install

Cypress will then attempt to download a binary with this format: https://www.example.com/desktop/:version?platform=p

Download path template

Starting with Cypress 9.3.0, you can use the CYPRESS_DOWNLOAD_PATH_TEMPLATE environment variable to download the Cypress binary from a custom URL that's generated based on endpoint, version, platform and architecture.

The following replacements are supported:

• ${endpoint} is replaced with https://download.cypress.io/desktop/:version. If CYPRESS_DOWNLOAD_MIRROR is set, its value is used instead of https://download.cypress.io (note that the /desktop remains!)
• ${platform} is replaced with the platform the installation is running on (e.g. win32, linux, darwin)
• ${arch} is replaced with the architecture the installation is running on (e.g. x64, arm64)
• Starting with Cypress 10.6.0, ${version} is replaced with the version number that's being installed (e.g. 10.11.0)

Examples:

To install the binary from a download mirror that matches the exact file structure of https://cdn.cypress.io (works for Cypress 9.3.0 or newer):

export CYPRESS_DOWNLOAD_MIRROR=https://cypress-download.local
export CYPRESS_DOWNLOAD_PATH_TEMPLATE='${endpoint}/${platform}-${arch}/cypress.zip'
# Example of a resulting URL: https://cypress-download.local/desktop/10.11.0/linux-x64/cypress.zip

To install the binary from a download server with a custom file structure (works for Cypress 10.6.0 or newer):

export CYPRESS_DOWNLOAD_PATH_TEMPLATE='https://software.local/cypress/${platform}/${arch}/${version}/cypress.zip'
# Example of a resulting URL: https://software.local/cypress/linux/x64/10.11.0/cypress.zip

To define CYPRESS_DOWNLOAD_PATH_TEMPLATE in .npmrc, put a backslash before every $ (works for Cypress 9.5.3 or newer):

CYPRESS_DOWNLOAD_PATH_TEMPLATE=\${endpoint}/\${platform}-\${arch}/cypress.zip

Using a custom certificate authority (CA)

Cypress can be configured to use the ca and cafile options from your NPM config file to download the Cypress binary.

For example, to use the CA at /home/person/certs/ca.crt when downloading Cypress, add the following to your .npmrc:

cafile=/home/person/certs/ca.crt

If neither cafile nor ca are set, Cypress looks at the system environment variable NODE_EXTRA_CA_CERTS and uses the corresponding certificate(s) as an extension for the trusted certificate authority when downloading the Cypress binary.

Note that the npm config is used as a replacement, and the node environment variable is used as an extension.

Opt out of sending exception data to Cypress

When an exception is thrown regarding Cypress, we send along the exception data to https://api.cypress.io. We solely use this information to help develop a better product.

If you would like to opt out of sending any exception data to Cypress, you can do so by setting CYPRESS_CRASH_REPORTS=0 in your system environment variables.

Opt out on Linux or macOS

To opt out of sending exception data on Linux or macOS, run the following command in a terminal before installing Cypress:

export CYPRESS_CRASH_REPORTS=0

To make these changes permanent, you can add this command to your shell's ~/.profile (~/.zsh_profile, ~/.bash_profile, etc.) to run them on every login.

Opt out on Windows

To opt out of sending exception data on Windows, run the following command in the Command Prompt before installing Cypress:

set CYPRESS_CRASH_REPORTS=0

To accomplish the same thing in PowerShell:

$env:CYPRESS_CRASH_REPORTS = "0"

To save the CYPRESS_CRASH_REPORTS variable for use in all new shells, use setx:

setx CYPRESS_CRASH_REPORTS 0

Opt out of Cypress commercial messaging

Cypress may occasionally display messages in your CI logs related to our commercial offerings and how they could benefit you during your workflows.

If you would like to opt out of all commercial messaging, you can do so by setting CYPRESS_COMMERCIAL_RECOMMENDATIONS=0 in your system environment variables.

Install pre-release version

If you would like to install a pre-release version of Cypress to test out functionality that has not yet been released, here is how:

1. Open up the list of commits to develop on the Cypress repo: https://github.com/cypress-io/cypress/commits/develop
2. Find the commit that you would like to install the pre-release version of. Click the comment icon (highlighted in red below):
   
3. You should see several comments from the cypress-bot user with instructions for installing Cypress pre-releases. Pick the one that corresponds to your operating system and CPU architecture, and follow the instructions there to install the pre-release.

Cypress pre-releases are only available for 60 days after they are built. Do not rely on these being available past 60 days.

Windows Subsystem for Linux

First, install the prerequisite packages using the command that relates to your linux distribution (Ubuntu/Debian or CentOS).

We need to have an X-server to display the Cypress UI from the linux subsystem. There are a variety of X-servers available, here we are going to use VcXsrv, you can use any other similar tool.

Download VcXsrv and install. You can set the settings to your preference ("Multiple windows" and "Start no client" are recommended), but on the page that lets you enable extra settings, be sure to select "Disable access control" which is required as WSL2 has its own IP address, which changes often.

In your .bashrc (or equivalent such as .zshrc) set the DISPLAY environment variable.

# set DISPLAY variable to the IP automatically assigned to WSL2
export DISPLAY=$(cat /etc/resolv.conf | grep nameserver | awk '{print $2; exit;}'):0.0

To confirm DISPLAY variable has been set, print it out in the terminal. You may need to restart your terminal to see this change.

echo $DISPLAY
# something like 172.17.224.1:0.0

The VcXsrv GUI uses D-Bus to internally communicate. After the export DISPLAY line in your .bashrc, add the following:

sudo /etc/init.d/dbus start &> /dev/null

Now your user needs to be granted access to run sudo dbus without needing to enter a password. To do so, use the visido command:

sudo visudo -f /etc/sudoers.d/dbus

In the editor that launches, add the following line, replacing <your_username> with your username (you can use the whoami command to print your username if you don't know it).

<your_username> ALL = (root) NOPASSWD: /etc/init.d/dbus

Go to Control Panel > System and Security > Windows Defender Firewall > Inbound Rules > New Rule.

Select Program and click on next. On the This program path, browse and select path to VcxSrv. On the next page select allow the connection and click next. On the next page, select all three options (Domain, Private, Public).

Give the rule a suitable name and description and click finish. WSL2 should now be able to open a GUI from shell.