Installation & Setup

📦 Installation & Setup

Setting up Bflow takes under a minute. There are no heavy browser binaries to download, no WebDriver daemons to install, and no complex configuration files.

📋 System Requirements

Requirement	Supported Versions	Notes
Bun Runtime	Not required for releases	Source development uses Bun `v1.3.12`. Install Bun
Chromium-based browser	Google Chrome, Chromium, Brave, or Microsoft Edge	Auto-detected from standard OS paths
Operating System	macOS (Apple Silicon / Intel), Linux (Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Arch), Windows (WSL2 or Native)	Fully cross-platform

🛠️ Install a Release

macOS and Linux:

curl -fsSL https://browser-automation-cli.bixbd.com/install.sh | sh

Windows PowerShell:

irm https://browser-automation-cli.bixbd.com/install.ps1 | iex

The installer detects the operating system and CPU architecture, verifies the release checksum, installs in a user-owned directory, and adds that directory to PATH. Open a new terminal if bflow is not immediately available.

Set BFLOW_VERSION to install a particular tag (with or without the leading v) and BFLOW_INSTALL_DIR to override the user-owned destination. BFLOW_REPOSITORY can point the installer at a compatible fork.

bflow --version
bflow

To uninstall on macOS/Linux, remove the installed bflow file and the installer-marked PATH entry from your shell configuration. On Windows, remove the installation directory (default %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\bflow) and its user PATH entry.

🧑‍💻 Install From Source

1. Clone the Repository

git clone https://github.com/KhBayazidAhmed/browser-automation-cli.git
cd browser-automation-cli

2. Install Project Dependencies

bun install

This installs Turborepo, Biome linter, and shared TypeScript configurations.

🔍 Chrome Auto-Discovery

The CLI automatically scans standard system locations for your Chrome or Chromium binary:

macOS:
- /Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome
- /Applications/Chromium.app/Contents/MacOS/Chromium
- /Applications/Brave Browser.app/Contents/MacOS/Brave Browser
- /Applications/Microsoft Edge.app/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Edge
Linux:
- /usr/bin/google-chrome
- /usr/bin/chromium
- /usr/bin/chromium-browser
- /usr/bin/brave-browser
- /usr/bin/microsoft-edge-stable
- /opt/google/chrome/google-chrome
- /snap/bin/chromium
Windows:
- Chrome, Edge, Brave, and Chromium under Program Files, Program Files (x86), or LocalAppData

[!TIP] You can also specify a custom Chrome path by setting the CHROME_PATH environment variable:
Terminal window
export CHROME_PATH="/custom/path/to/chrome"

🧪 Verifying Your Installation

For a source checkout, run the automated test suite to ensure CDP communication and browser spawning work properly:

bun test

You should see 50+ passing tests verifying locators, flow runners, assertion engines, webcam injection, and built-in tasks.

🚀 Launch the Studio

For a release installation, launch the interactive wizard:

bflow

For a source checkout:

bun cli

bun dev starts all development workspaces, including the docs site. Use bun cli for the automation studio alone.

📦 Building a Standalone Executable

The release builder compiles the CLI into a single executable and embeds the supplied version:

bun run build:release bun-darwin-arm64 dist/bflow 0.1.0
./dist/bflow --version

Supported target names are bun-darwin-arm64, bun-darwin-x64, bun-linux-arm64, bun-linux-arm64-musl, bun-linux-x64-baseline, bun-linux-x64-musl, bun-windows-arm64, and bun-windows-x64-baseline. Source runs report the version as development; compiled releases report the embedded version.

Workflow and output paths are resolved from the current working directory. This keeps workflows/ and output/ beside the project that invokes either the source CLI or standalone executable.