Playwright Updates & Release Notes

🌐 Tracing on HAR recording

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

Original source

🎬 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.

• playwright-cli binds all of its browsers automatically, so you can see what your agents are doing.

• Pass PLAYWRIGHT_DASHBOARD=1 env variable to see all @playwright/test browsers in the dashboard.

🐛 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.

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.

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

Original source

📣 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:

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

Original source

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

Original source

Playwright Agents

Introducing Playwright Agents, three custom agent definitions designed to guide LLMs through the core process of building a Playwright test:
🎭 planner explores the app and produces a Markdown test plan
🎭 generator transforms the Markdown plan into the Playwright Test files
🎭 healer executes the test suite and automatically repairs failing tests

Run npx playwright init-agents with your client of choice to generate the latest agent definitions:

• Generate agent files for each agentic loop
  • Visual Studio Code

    npx playwright init-agents --loop=vscode
    

  • Claude Code

    npx playwright init-agents --loop=claude
    

  • opencode

    npx playwright init-agents --loop=opencode
    

  Note
  VS Code v1.105 (currently on the VS Code Insiders channel) is needed for the agentic experience in VS Code. It will become stable shortly, we are a bit ahead of times with this functionality!

Learn more about Playwright Agents

New APIs

New methods page.consoleMessages() and page.pageErrors() for retrieving the most recent console messages from the page
New method page.requests() for retrieving the most recent network requests from the page
Added --test-list and --test-list-invert to allow manual specification of specific tests from a file

UI Mode and HTML Reporter

Added option to 'html' reporter to disable the "Copy prompt" button
Added option to 'html' reporter and UI Mode to merge files, collapsing test and describe blocks into a single unified list
Added option to UI Mode mirroring the --update-snapshots options
Added option to UI Mode to run only a single worker at a time

Breaking Changes

Event browserContext.on('backgroundpage') has been deprecated and will not be emitted. Method browserContext.backgroundPages() will return an empty list

Miscellaneous

Aria snapshots render and compare input placeholder
Added environment variable PLAYWRIGHT_TEST to Playwright worker processes to allow discriminating on testing status

Browser Versions

Chromium 141.0.7390.37
Mozilla Firefox 142.0.1
WebKit 26.0

Original source

Highlights

• #37479 - [Bug]: Upgrade Chromium to 140.0.7339.186.
• #37147 - [Regression]: Internal error: step id not found.
• #37146 - [Regression]: HTML reporter displays a broken chip link when there are no projects.
• #37137 - Revert "fix(a11y): track inert elements as hidden".
• #37532 - chore: do not use -k option

Browser Versions

• Chromium 140.0.7339.186
• Mozilla Firefox 141.0
• WebKit 26.0

This version was also tested against the following stable channels:

• Google Chrome 139
• Microsoft Edge 139

Original source

New APIs

New Property testStepInfo.titlePath Returns the full title path starting from the test file, including test and step titles.

Codegen

Automatic toBeVisible() assertions: Codegen can now generate automatic toBeVisible() assertions for common UI interactions. This feature can be enabled in the Codegen settings UI.

Breaking Changes

⚠️ Dropped support for Chromium extension manifest v2.

Miscellaneous

Added support for Debian 13 "Trixie".

Browser Versions

Chromium 140.0.7339.16

Mozilla Firefox 141.0

WebKit 26.0

This version was also tested against the following stable channels:

Google Chrome 139

Microsoft Edge 139

Original source

Highlights

New cookie property partitionKey in browserContext.cookies() and browserContext.addCookies(). This property allows to save and restore partitioned cookies. See CHIPS MDN article for more information. Note that browsers have different support and defaults for cookie partitioning.

New option noSnippets to disable code snippets in the html report.

import { defineConfig } from '@playwright/test';
export default defineConfig({
  reporter: [['html', { noSnippets: true }]]
});

New property location in test annotations, for example in testResult.annotations and testInfo.annotations. It shows where the annotation like test.skip or test.fixme was added.

Command Line

• New option --user-data-dir in multiple commands. You can specify the same user data dir to reuse browsing state, like authentication, between sessions.
• npx playwright codegen --user-data-dir=./user-data
• Option -gv has been removed from the npx playwright test command. Use --grep-invert instead.
• npx playwright open does not open the test recorder anymore. Use npx playwright codegen instead.

Miscellaneous

• Support for Node.js 16 has been removed.
• Support for Node.js 18 has been deprecated, and will be removed in the future.

Browser Versions

• Chromium 139.0.7258.5
• Mozilla Firefox 140.0.2
• WebKit 26.0
• This version was also tested against the following stable channels:
• Google Chrome 140
• Microsoft Edge 140

Original source