Playwright

🧱 New component testing model

Component testing moves to a stories and galleries model. A story wraps your component in one specific scenario — hard-coded props, mock data, providers — and a gallery page that you serve renders stories on demand. The new fixtures.mount() fixture navigates to the gallery, mounts a story by id, and returns a Locator scoped to the story's root element:

test('click should expand', async ({ mount }) => {
  const component = await mount('components/Expandable/Stateful');
  await component.getByRole('button').click();
  await expect(component.getByTestId('expanded')).toHaveValue('true');
});

Pass a story type as a template argument to type-check its props, and use update(props) / unmount() on the returned locator to re-render or tear down within a test.

🛑 Cancel operations with AbortSignal

Most operations and web-first assertions now accept a signal option that takes an AbortSignal, letting you cancel long-running actions, navigations, waits, and assertions:

const controller = new AbortController();
setTimeout(() => controller.abort(), 1000);

await page.getByRole('button', { name: 'Submit' }).click({ signal: controller.signal });
await expect(page.getByText('Done')).toBeVisible({ signal: controller.signal });

Providing a signal does not disable the default timeout; pass timeout: 0 to disable it.

🖼️ WebP screenshots

expect(page).toHaveScreenshot() and expect(locator).toHaveScreenshot() can now store snapshots in the WebP format — just give the snapshot a .webp name:

// Visual comparisons store the golden snapshot as lossless WebP.
await expect(page).toHaveScreenshot('homepage.webp');

// Standalone screenshots can trade quality for size with lossy WebP.
await page.screenshot({ path: 'homepage.webp', quality: 50 });

page.screenshot() and [locator.screenshot() (https://playwright.dev/docs/api/class-locator#locator-screenshot) also accept webp as a type, where quality 100 (the default) is lossless and lower values use lossy compression.

🧩 Custom test filtering with Reporter.preprocess()

New reporter.preprocess() hook runs after the configuration is resolved and before reporter.onBegin(), letting a reporter mark individual tests as skipped, excluded, fixed, or failing through a TestRun object:

class MyReporter {
  async preprocess({ config, suite, testRun }) {
    for (const test of suite.allTests()) {
      if (shouldSkip(test))
        testRun.skip(test);
    }
  }
}

🔁 Isolated retries

New testConfig.retryStrategy controls when failed tests are retried. The default 'immediate' retries as soon as a worker is free; 'isolated' runs all retries at the end, one by one in a single worker, to minimize interference with the rest of the suite:

// playwright.config.ts
export default defineConfig({
  retries: 2,
  retryStrategy: 'isolated',
});

New APIs

Browser and Context

• New option credentials includes the context's virtual WebAuthn Credentials (passkeys) in the storage state, so they can be persisted and re-seeded into later contexts.

Actions

• New scroll option ("auto" | "none") on actions to opt out of Playwright's automatic scroll-into-view.

Network

• New apiResponse.timing() returns resource timing information for an API response.

Evaluation

• New locator.waitForFunction() waits until a function — called with the matching element — returns a truthy value.
• page.evaluate() and related methods now accept functions as evaluate arguments.
• page.addInitScript() / browserContext.addInitScript() now accept functions as init-script arguments.

Command line & MCP

• Playwright now bundles the Playwright MCP server and playwright-cli, runnable via npx playwright mcp and npx playwright cli.

Reporters

• The HTML report's Merge files grouping — previously only a UI toggle — can now be enabled from the config with the new mergeFiles reporter option:

// playwright.config.ts
export default defineConfig({
  reporter: [['html', { mergeFiles: true }]],
});

Announcements

• ⚠️ Debian 11 is not supported anymore.

Browser Versions

• Chromium 151.0.7922.34
• Mozilla Firefox 153.0
• WebKit 26.5

This version was also tested against the following stable channels:

• Google Chrome 151
• Microsoft Edge 151

Bug Fixes

• #41365 [Bug]: Expect.Extend matcher with same name as default matcher in same expect instance overrides default matchers implementation to custom matcher
• #41351 [Bug]: Playwright UI mode: apiRequestContext._wrapApiCall reports unexpected number of bytes (same test passes in headed mode)
• #41360 [Bug]: Trace viewer: message times in websockets are downscaled by 1000
• #41311 [Bug]: [Regression]: Sync loader throws "context.conditions?.includes is not a function" on Node 22.15
• #41371 [Regression]: Sync ESM loader (registerHooks) fails to resolve extensionless .ts subpath imports across pnpm workspace symlinks

🔑 WebAuthn passkeys

New Credentials virtual authenticator, available via browserContext.credentials, lets tests register passkeys and answer navigator.credentials.create() / navigator.credentials.get() ceremonies in the page — no real hardware key required, works in all browsers:

const context = await browser.newContext();

// Seed a passkey your backend provisioned for a test user.
await context.credentials.create('example.com', {
  id: credentialId,
  userHandle,
  privateKey,
  publicKey,
});
await context.credentials.install();

const page = await context.newPage();
await page.goto('https://example.com/login');
// The page's navigator.credentials.get() is answered with the seeded passkey.

You can also let the app register a passkey once in a setup test, read it back with credentials.get(), and seed it into later tests — see Credentials for details.

🗃️ Web Storage

New WebStorage API, available via page.localStorage and page.sessionStorage, reads and writes the page's storage for the current origin:

await page.localStorage.setItem('token', 'abc');
const token = await page.localStorage.getItem('token');
const items = await page.sessionStorage.items();

New APIs

Network

• apiResponse.securityDetails() and apiResponse.serverAddr() mirror the browser-side response.securityDetails() and response.serverAddr().

Browser and Screencast

• New option artifactsDir in browserType.connectOverCDP() controls where artifacts such as traces and downloads are stored when attached to an existing browser.
• New option cursor in screencast.showActions() controls the cursor decoration rendered for pointer actions.
• The onFrame callback in screencast.start() now receives a timestamp of when the frame was presented by the browser.

Test runner

• The testOptions.video option now supports the same set of modes as trace: new 'on-all-retries', 'retain-on-first-failure' and 'retain-on-failure-and-retries' values. See the video modes table for which runs are recorded and kept in each mode.
• Supported expect.soft.poll(...).
• New fullConfig.argv — a snapshot of process.argv from the runner process, handy for reading custom arguments passed after the -- separator.
• New fullConfig.failOnFlakyTests mirrors the config option, so reporters can explain why a flaky run failed.
• testInfo.errors now lists each sub-error of an AggregateError as a separate entry.
• New -G command line shorthand for --grep-invert.

🛠️ Other improvements

• Playwright now supports Ubuntu 26.04.
• HAR and trace recordings now include WebSocket requests.

Browser Versions

• Chromium 149.0.7827.55
• Mozilla Firefox 151.0
• WebKit 26.5

This version was also tested against the following stable channels:

• Google Chrome 149
• Microsoft Edge 149

🌐 HAR recording on Tracing

tracing.startHar() / tracing.stopHar() expose HAR recording as a first-class tracing API, with the same content, mode and urlFilter options as recordHar. The returned Disposable makes it easy to scope a recording with await using:

await using har = await context.tracing.startHar('trace.har');
const page = await context.newPage();
await page.goto('https://playwright.dev');
// HAR is finalized when `har` goes out of scope.

🪝 Drop API

New locator.drop() simulates an external drag-and-drop of files or clipboard-like data onto an element. Playwright dispatches dragenter, dragover, and drop with a synthetic [DataTransfer] in the page context — works cross-browser and is great for testing upload zones:

await page.locator('#dropzone').drop({
  files: { name: 'note.txt', mimeType: 'text/plain', buffer: Buffer.from('hello') },
});

await page.locator('#dropzone').drop({
  data: {
    'text/plain': 'hello world',
    'text/uri-list': 'https://example.com',
  },
});

🎯 Aria snapshots

• expect(page).toMatchAriaSnapshot() now works on a Page, in addition to a Locator — equivalent to asserting against page.locator('body').
• New boxes option on locator.ariaSnapshot() / page.ariaSnapshot() appends each element's bounding box as [box=x,y,width,height], useful for AI consumption.

🛑 test.abort()

New test.abort() aborts the currently running test from a fixture, hook, or route handler with an optional message. Use it when you have detected an unrecoverable misuse and want to fail the test right away:

test('does not publish to the shared page', async ({ page }) => {
  await page.route('**/publish', route => {
    test.abort('Tests must not publish to the shared page. Use the `clone` option.');
    return route.abort();
  });
  // ...
});

New APIs

Browser, Context and Page

• Event browser.on('context') — fired when a new context is created on the browser.
• BrowserContext now mirrors lifecycle events from its pages: browserContext.on('download'), browserContext.on('frameattached'), browserContext.on('framedetached'), browserContext.on('framenavigated'), browserContext.on('pageclose'), browserContext.on('pageload').

Locators and Assertions

• New option description in page.getByRole() / locator.getByRole() / frame.getByRole() / frameLocator.getByRole() for matching the accessible description.
• New option pseudo in expect(locator).toHaveCSS() reads computed styles from ::before or ::after.
• New option style in locator.highlight() applies extra inline CSS to the highlight overlay, plus new page.hideHighlight() to clear all highlights.

Network

• webSocketRoute.protocols() returns the WebSocket subprotocols requested by the page.
• New option noDefaults in browserType.connectOverCDP() disables Playwright's default overrides on the default context (download behavior, focus emulation, media emulation), so attaching to a user's daily-driver browser doesn't disturb its state.

Errors and Reporting

• New webError.location() mirrors consoleMessage.location().
• consoleMessage.location() now exposes line / column properties (lineNumber / columnNumber are deprecated).
• New testInfoError.errorContext surfaces additional diagnostic context, such as the aria snapshot of the receiver at the time of an expect(...) matcher failure.
• reporter.onError() now receives a workerInfo argument with details about the worker for fixture teardown errors.

Test runner

• New {testFileBaseName} token in testProject.snapshotPathTemplate — file name without extension.
• Test runner now errors when a config tries to override a non-option fixture, and rejects workers: 0 or negative values.

🛠️ Other improvements

• HTML reporter:
  • npx playwright show-report accepts .zip files directly — no need to unzip first.
  • Steps that contain attachments inside nested children show an indicator on the parent step.
  • The repeatEachIndex is shown in the test header when non-zero.
• Trace Viewer adds a pretty-print toggle for JSON / form request and response bodies in the network details panel.

Breaking Changes ⚠️

• Removed long-deprecated APIs:
  • Locator.ariaRef() — use the standard locator.ariaSnapshot() pipeline.
  • handle option on BrowserContext.exposeBinding and Page.exposeBinding.
  • logger option on BrowserType.connect and BrowserType.connectOverCDP — use tracing instead.
  • Context options videosPath / videoSize — use recordVideo instead.

Browser Versions

• Chromium 148.0.7778.96
• Mozilla Firefox 150.0.2
• WebKit 26.4

This version was also tested against the following stable channels:

• Google Chrome 147
• Microsoft Edge 147

Bug Fixes

• [Windows] Reverted hiding console window when spawning browser processes, which caused regressions including broken codegen, --ui and show commands (#39990)

🎬 Screencast

New page.screencast API provides a unified interface for capturing page content with:

• Screencast recordings
• Action annotations
• Visual overlays
• Real-time frame capture
• Agentic video receipts

Screencast recording — record video with precise start/stop control, as an alternative to the recordVideo option:

await page.screencast.start({ path: 'video.webm' });
// ... perform actions ...
await page.screencast.stop();

Action annotations — enable built-in visual annotations that highlight interacted elements and display action titles during recording:

await page.screencast.showActions({ position: 'top-right' });

screencast.showActions() accepts position ('top-left', 'top', 'top-right', 'bottom-left', 'bottom', 'bottom-right'), duration (ms per annotation), and fontSize (px). Returns a disposable to stop showing actions.

Action annotations can also be enabled in test fixtures via the video option:

// playwright.config.ts
export default defineConfig({
  use: {
    video: {
      mode: 'on',
      show: {
        actions: { position: 'top-left' },
        test: { position: 'top-right' },
      },
    },
  },
});

Visual overlays — add chapter titles and custom HTML overlays on top of the page for richer narration:

await page.screencast.showChapter('Adding TODOs', {
  description: 'Type and press enter for each TODO',
  duration: 1000,
});

await page.screencast.showOverlay('<div style="color: red">Recording</div>');

Real-time frame capture — stream JPEG-encoded frames for custom processing like thumbnails, live previews, AI vision, and more:

await page.screencast.start({
  onFrame: ({ data }) => sendToVisionModel(data),
  size: { width: 800, height: 600 },
});

Agentic video receipts — coding agents can produce video evidence of their work. After completing a task, an agent can record a walkthrough video with rich annotations for human review:

await page.screencast.start({ path: 'receipt.webm' });
await page.screencast.showActions({ position: 'top-right' });

await page.screencast.showChapter('Verifying checkout flow', {
  description: 'Added coupon code support per ticket #1234',
});

// Agent performs the verification steps...
await page.locator('#coupon').fill('SAVE20');
await page.locator('#apply-coupon').click();
await expect(page.locator('.discount')).toContainText('20%');

await page.screencast.showChapter('Done', {
  description: 'Coupon applied, discount reflected in total',
});

await page.screencast.stop();

The resulting video serves as a receipt: chapter titles provide context, action annotations highlight each interaction, and the visual walkthrough is faster to review than text logs.

🔗 Interoperability

New browser.bind() API makes a launched browser available for playwright-cli, @playwright/mcp, and other clients to connect to.

Bind a browser — start a browser and bind it so others can connect:

const { endpoint } = await browser.bind('my-session', {
  workspaceDir: '/my/project',
});

Connect from playwright-cli — connect to the running browser from your favorite coding agent.

playwright-cli attach my-session
playwright-cli -s my-session snapshot

Connect from @playwright/mcp — or point your MCP server to the running browser.

@playwright/mcp --endpoint=my-session

Connect from a Playwright client — use API to connect to the browser. Multiple clients at a time are supported!

const browser = await chromium.connect(endpoint);

Pass host and port options to bind over WebSocket instead of a named pipe:

const { endpoint } = await browser.bind('my-session', {
  host: 'localhost',
  port: 0,
});
// endpoint is a ws:// URL

Call browser.unbind() to stop accepting new connections.

📊 Observability

Run playwright-cli show to open the Dashboard that lists all the bound browsers, their statuses, and allows interacting with them:

• See what your agent is doing on the background browsers
• Click into the sessions for manual interventions
• Open DevTools to inspect pages from the background browsers.

🐛 CLI debugger for agents

Coding agents can now run npx playwright test --debug=cli to attach and debug tests over playwright-cli — perfect for automatically fixing tests in agentic workflows:

$ npx playwright test --debug=cli
### Debugging Instructions
- Run "playwright-cli attach tw-87b59e" to attach to this test

$ playwright-cli attach tw-87b59e
### Session `tw-87b59e` created, attached to `tw-87b59e`.
Run commands with: playwright-cli --session=tw-87b59e <command>
### Paused
- Navigate to "/" at output/tests/example.spec.ts:4

$ playwright-cli --session tw-87b59e step-over
### Page
- Page URL: https://playwright.dev/
- Page Title: Fast and reliable end-to-end testing for modern web apps | Playwright
### Paused
- Expect "toHaveTitle" at output/tests/example.spec.ts:7

📋 CLI trace analysis for agents

Coding agents can run npx playwright trace to explore Playwright Trace and understand failing or flaky tests from the command line:

$ npx playwright trace open test-results/example-has-title-chromium/trace.zip
  Title:        example.spec.ts:3 › has title

$ npx playwright trace actions --grep="expect"
     # Time       Action                                                  Duration
  ──── ─────────  ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────── ────────
    9. 0:00.859  Expect "toHaveTitle"                                        5.1s  ✗

$ npx playwright trace action 9
  Expect "toHaveTitle"
  Error: expect(page).toHaveTitle(expected) failed
    Expected pattern: /Wrong Title/
    Received string:  "Fast and reliable end-to-end testing for modern web apps | Playwright"
    Timeout: 5000ms
  Snapshots
    available: before, after
    usage:     npx playwright trace snapshot 9 --name <before|after>

$ npx playwright trace snapshot 9 --name after
### Page
- Page Title: Fast and reliable end-to-end testing for modern web apps | Playwright

$ npx playwright trace close

♻️ await using

Many APIs now return async disposables, enabling the await using syntax for automatic cleanup:

await using page = await context.newPage();
{
  await using route = await page.route('**/*', route => route.continue());
  await using script = await page.addInitScript('console.log("init script here")');
  await page.goto('https://playwright.dev');
  // do something
}
// route and init script have been removed at this point

🔍 Snapshots and Locators

• Method page.ariaSnapshot() to capture the aria snapshot of the page — equivalent to page.locator('body').ariaSnapshot().
• Options depth and mode in locator.ariaSnapshot().
• Method locator.normalize() converts a locator to follow best practices like test ids and aria roles.
• Method page.pickLocator() enters an interactive mode where hovering over elements highlights them and shows the corresponding locator. Click an element to get its Locator back. Use page.cancelPickLocator() to cancel.

New APIs

Screencast

• page.screencast provides video recording, real-time frame streaming, and overlay management.
• Methods screencast.start() and screencast.stop() for recording and frame capture.
• Methods screencast.showActions() and screencast.hideActions() for action annotations.
• Methods screencast.showChapter() and screencast.showOverlay() for visual overlays.
• Methods screencast.showOverlays() and screencast.hideOverlays() for overlay visibility control.

Storage, Console and Errors

• Method browserContext.setStorageState() clears existing cookies, local storage, and IndexedDB for all origins and sets a new storage state — no need to create a new context.
• Methods page.clearConsoleMessages() and page.clearPageErrors() to clear stored messages and errors.
• Option filter in page.consoleMessages() and page.pageErrors() controls which messages are returned.
• Method consoleMessage.timestamp().

Miscellaneous

• browserContext.debugger provides programmatic control over the Playwright debugger.
• Method browserContext.isClosed().
• Method request.existingResponse() returns the response without waiting.
• Method response.httpVersion() returns the HTTP version used by the response.
• Events cdpSession.on('event') and cdpSession.on('close') for CDP sessions.
• Option live in tracing.start() for real-time trace updates.
• Option artifactsDir in browserType.launch() to configure the artifacts directory.

🛠️ Other improvements

• UI Mode has an option to only show tests affected by source changes.
• UI Mode and Trace Viewer have improved action filtering.
• HTML Reporter shows the list of runs from the same worker.
• HTML Reporter allows filtering test steps for quick search.
• New trace mode 'retain-on-failure-and-retries' records a trace for each test run and retains all traces when an attempt fails — great for comparing a passing trace with a failing one from a flaky test.

Known Issues ⚠️⚠️

• navigator.platform emulation can cause Ctrl or Meta dispatching errors (https://github.com/microsoft/playwright/issues/40009). Pass PLAYWRIGHT_NO_UA_PLATFORM = '1' environment variable while we are issuing a patch release. Let us know in the issue how it affected you.

Breaking Changes ⚠️

• Removed macOS 14 support for WebKit. We recommend upgrading your macOS version, or keeping an older Playwright version.
• Removed @playwright/experimental-ct-svelte package.
• junit test reporter now differentiates between types of errors, so some of the previous <failure>s are now reported as <error>s.

Browser Versions

• Chromium 147.0.7727.15
• Mozilla Firefox 148.0.2
• WebKit 26.4

This version was also tested against the following stable channels:

• Google Chrome 146
• Microsoft Edge 146

Highlights

#39121 fix(trace viewer): make paths via stdin work #39129 fix: do not force swiftshader on chromium mac

Browser Versions

• Chromium 145.0.7632.6
• Mozilla Firefox 146.0.1
• WebKit 26.0

Highlights

#39036 fix(msedge): fix local network permissions #39037 chore: update cft download location #38995 chore(webkit): disable frame sessions on fronzen builds

Browser Versions

• Chromium 145.0.7632.6
• Mozilla Firefox 146.0.1
• WebKit 26.0

📣 Playwright CLI+SKILLs 📣

We are adding a new token-efficient CLI mode of operation to Playwright with the skills located at playwright-cli. This brings the long-awaited official SKILL-focused CLI mode to our story and makes it more coding agent-friendly.

It is the first snapshot with the essential command set (which is already larger than the original MCP!), but we expect it to grow rapidly. Unlike the token use, that one we expect to go down since snapshots are no longer forced into the LLM!

Timeline

If you're using merged reports, the HTML report Speedboard tab now shows the Timeline:

Timeline chart in the HTML report

UI Mode and Trace Viewer Improvements

• New 'system' theme option follows your OS dark/light mode preference
• Search functionality (Cmd/Ctrl+F) is now available in code editors
• Network details panel has been reorganized for better usability
• JSON responses are now automatically formatted for readability

Thanks to @cpAdm for contributing these improvements!

Miscellaneous

browserType.connectOverCDP() now accepts an isLocal option. When set to true, it tells Playwright that it runs on the same host as the CDP server, enabling file system optimizations.

Breaking Changes ⚠️

• Removed _react and _vue selectors. See locators guide for alternatives.
• Removed :light selector engine suffix. Use standard CSS selectors instead.
• Option devtools from browserType.launch() has been removed. Use args: ['--auto-open-devtools-for-tabs'] instead.
• Removed macOS 13 support for WebKit. We recommend to upgrade your macOS version, or keep using an older Playwright version.

Browser Versions

• Chromium 145.0.7632.6
• Mozilla Firefox 146.0.1
• WebKit 26.0

This version was also tested against the following stable channels:

• Google Chrome 144
• Microsoft Edge 144

Speedboard

In HTML reporter, there's a new tab we call "Speedboard":

It shows you all your executed tests sorted by slowness, and can help you understand where your test suite is taking longer than expected. Take a look at yours - maybe you'll find some tests that are spending a longer time waiting than they should!

Chrome for Testing

Starting with this release, Playwright switches from Chromium, to using Chrome for Testing builds. Both headed and headless browsers are subject to this. Your tests should still be passing after upgrading to Playwright 1.57.

We're expecting no functional changes to come from this switch. The biggest change is the new icon and title in your toolbar.

If you still see an unexpected behaviour change, please file an issue.

On Arm64 Linux, Playwright continues to use Chromium.

Waiting for webserver output

testConfig.webServer added a wait field. Pass a regular expression, and Playwright will wait until the webserver logs match it.

import { defineConfig } from '@playwright/test';

export default defineConfig({
  webServer: {
    command: 'npm run start',
    wait: {
      stdout: '/Listening on port (?<my_server_port>\\d+)/'
    },
  },
});

If you include a named capture group into the expression, then Playwright will provide the capture group contents via environment variables:

import { test, expect } from '@playwright/test';

test.use({ baseUrl: `http://localhost:${process.env.MY_SERVER_PORT ?? 3000}` });

test('homepage', async ({ page }) => {
  await page.goto('/');
});

This is not just useful for capturing varying ports of dev servers. You can also use it to wait for readiness of a service that doesn't expose an HTTP readiness check, but instead prints a readiness message to stdout or stderr.

Breaking Change

After 3 years of being deprecated, we removed Page#accessibility from our API. Please use other libraries such as Axe if you need to test page accessibility. See our Node.js guide for integration with Axe.

New APIs

• New property testConfig.tag adds a tag to all tests in this run. This is useful when using merge-reports.
• worker.on('console') event is emitted when JavaScript within the worker calls one of console API methods, e.g. console.log or console.dir. worker.waitForEvent() can be used to wait for it.
• locator.description() returns locator description previously set with locator.describe(), and Locator.toString() now uses the description when available.
• New option steps in locator.click() and locator.dragTo() that configures the number of mousemove events emitted while moving the mouse pointer to the target element.
• Network requests issued by Service Workers are now reported and can be routed through the BrowserContext, only in Chromium. You can opt out using the PLAYWRIGHT_DISABLE_SERVICE_WORKER_NETWORK environment variable.
• Console messages from Service Workers are dispatched through worker.on('console'). You can opt out of this using the PLAYWRIGHT_DISABLE_SERVICE_WORKER_CONSOLE environment variable.

Browser Versions

• Chromium 143.0.7499.4
• Mozilla Firefox 144.0.2
• WebKit 26.0