playwright-core 1.59.0 on Node.js NPM

🎬 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

playwright-core 1.59.0 v1.59.0 on Node.js NPM