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Canary releases

Introduction​

Playwright for Node.js has a canary releases system.

It permits you to test new unreleased features instead of waiting for a full release. They get released daily on the next NPM tag of Playwright.

It is a good way to give feedback to maintainers, ensuring the newly implemented feature works as intended.

note

Using a canary release in production might seem risky, but in practice, it's not.

A canary release passes all automated tests and is used to test e.g. the HTML report, Trace Viewer, or Playwright Inspector with end-to-end tests.

npm install -D @playwright/test@next

Next npm Dist Tag​

For any code-related commit on main, the continuous integration will publish a daily canary release under the @next npm dist tag.

You can see on npm the current dist tags:

  • latest: stable releases
  • next: next releases, published daily
  • beta: after a release-branch was cut, usually a week before a stable release each commit gets published under this tag

Using a Canary Release​

npm install -D @playwright/test@next

Documentation​

The stable and the next documentation is published on playwright.dev. To see the next documentation, press Shift on the keyboard 5 times.