Command line

Introduction

Here are the most common options available in the command line.

• Run all the tests

  npx playwright test

• Run a single test file

  npx playwright test tests/todo-page.spec.ts

• Run a set of test files

  npx playwright test tests/todo-page/ tests/landing-page/

• Run files that have my-spec or my-spec-2 in the file name

  npx playwright test my-spec my-spec-2

• Run tests that are in line 42 in my-spec.ts

  npx playwright test my-spec.ts:42

• Run the test with the title

  npx playwright test -g "add a todo item"

• Run tests in headed browsers

  npx playwright test --headed

• Run all the tests against a specific project

  npx playwright test --project=chromium

• Disable parallelization

  npx playwright test --workers=1

• Choose a reporter

  npx playwright test --reporter=dot

• Run in debug mode with Playwright Inspector

  npx playwright test --debug

• Run tests in interactive UI mode, with a built-in watch mode (Preview)

  npx playwright test --ui

• Ask for help

  npx playwright test --help

Reference

Complete set of Playwright Test options is available in the configuration file. Following options can be passed to a command line and take priority over the configuration file:

Option	Description
Non-option arguments	Each argument is treated as a regular expression matched against the full test file path. Only tests from the files matching the pattern will be executed. Special symbols like $ or * should be escaped with \. In many shells/terminals you may need to quote the arguments.
-c <file> or --config <file>	Configuration file. If not passed, defaults to playwright.config.ts or playwright.config.js in the current directory.
--debug	Run tests with Playwright Inspector. Shortcut for PWDEBUG=1 environment variable and --timeout=0 --max-failures=1 --headed --workers=1 options.
--fail-on-flaky-tests	Fails test runs that contain flaky tests. By default flaky tests count as successes.
--forbid-only	Whether to disallow test.only. Useful on CI.
--global-timeout <number>	Total timeout for the whole test run in milliseconds. By default, there is no global timeout. Learn more about various timeouts.
-g <grep> or --grep <grep>	Only run tests matching this regular expression. For example, this will run 'should add to cart' when passed -g "add to cart". The regular expression will be tested against the string that consists of the project name, test file name, test.describe titles if any, test title and all test tags, separated by spaces, e.g. chromium my-test.spec.ts my-suite my-test @smoke. The filter does not apply to the tests from dependency projects, i.e. Playwright will still run all tests from project dependencies.
--grep-invert <grep>	Only run tests not matching this regular expression. The opposite of --grep. The filter does not apply to the tests from dependency projects, i.e. Playwright will still run all tests from project dependencies.
--headed	Run tests in headed browsers. Useful for debugging.
--ignore-snapshots	Whether to ignore snapshots. Use this when snapshot expectations are known to be different, e.g. running tests on Linux against Windows screenshots.
--last-failed	Only re-run the failures.
--list	list all the tests, but do not run them.
--max-failures <N> or -x	Stop after the first N test failures. Passing -x stops after the first failure.
--no-deps	Ignore the dependencies between projects and behave as if they were not specified.
--output <dir>	Directory for artifacts produced by tests, defaults to test-results.
--only-changed [ref]	Only run test files that have been changed between working tree and "ref". Defaults to running all uncommitted changes with ref=HEAD. Only supports Git.
--pass-with-no-tests	Allows the test suite to pass when no files are found.
--project <name>	Only run tests from the specified projects, supports '*' wildcard. Defaults to running all projects defined in the configuration file.
--quiet	Whether to suppress stdout and stderr from the tests.
--repeat-each <N>	Run each test N times, defaults to one.
--reporter <reporter>	Choose a reporter: minimalist dot, concise line or detailed list. See reporters for more information. You can also pass a path to a custom reporter file.
--retries <number>	The maximum number of retries for flaky tests, defaults to zero (no retries).
--shard <shard>	Shard tests and execute only selected shard, specified in the form current/all, 1-based, for example 3/5.
--timeout <number>	Maximum timeout in milliseconds for each test, defaults to 30 seconds. Learn more about various timeouts.
--trace <mode>	Force tracing mode, can be on, off, on-first-retry, on-all-retries, retain-on-failure
--tsconfig <path>	Path to a single tsconfig applicable to all imported files. See tsconfig resolution for more details.
--update-snapshots or -u	Whether to update snapshots with actual results instead of comparing them. Use this when snapshot expectations have changed.
--workers <number> or -j <number>	The maximum number of concurrent worker processes that run in parallel.