Playwright Release Notes & Changelog

🔒 Test locks

Tests that access a shared resource — an external service, a global account setting — can now declare a named lock.
Tests that share a lock name never run concurrently, across files, workers and projects, while
everything else keeps running in parallel:

A test can hold multiple locks, and test.describe() accepts a lock for the whole group.
Learn more about test locks.

🪟 Locate across frames

page.frameLocator() and frame.frameLocator() called without a selector search in any frame of the
subtree, so you no longer need to locate the iframe first:

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Bug Fixes

• #41989 [Regression]: tsconfig "extends" bare specifier isn't resolved via node_modules walk-up like tsc (fatal since 1.62)
• #41998 [Regression]: directory-form tsconfig project references ("path": "../pkg") fail to resolve (fatal since 1.62)
• #41985 Accessibility snapshot drops button name when text is nested inside spans with aria-hidden SVG
• #42000 [Regression]: page.evaluate() arg of a branded primitive type (string & { brand }) no longer type-checks since 1.62
• #42013 [BUG]Image-type actionable elements are not presented in the snapshot.

🧱 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:

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.

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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

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🔑 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:

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:

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🌐 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:

🪝 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:

🎯 Aria snapshots

• expect(page).toMatchAriaSnapshot() now works

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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:

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

screencast.showActions() accepts position ('top-left', 'top', 'top-right', 'bottom-left', 'bottom', 'bottom-right'), duration (ms per annotation), and

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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