Playwright for QA Engineers

How does Playwright auto-wait work?

Each action waits for the element to be attached, visible, stable, and enabled before acting, removing the need for most explicit waits.

Explain Playwright fixtures.

Fixtures are dependency-injected setup units (page, context, custom) that scope to a test or worker and replace the before/after pattern.

What is the trace viewer and when do you use it?

It records DOM snapshots, network, console, and steps. Use it to debug failures locally and on CI without re-running the test.

How do you run Playwright tests in parallel?

Use workers and projects; shard suites across CI runners for further speedup.

How do you handle authentication in Playwright?

Sign in once in a setup project, save storageState, then reuse it across tests via the storageState option.

How do you do API testing in Playwright?

Use the request fixture or browser request context to call APIs directly, share auth with UI tests, and assert on responses.

How do you reduce flake in Playwright?

Lean on auto-wait, avoid arbitrary sleeps, isolate data, use trace on first retry, and quarantine genuinely unstable tests with metrics.

Playwright vs Cypress — when do you pick Playwright?

Pick Playwright when you need multi-browser, multi-tab, multi-origin, parallel sharding, or strong API support out of the box.

What are projects in playwright.config?

Named configurations (browser, device, base URL, env) that let one suite target multiple environments in one run.

How do you handle visual regression?

Use toHaveScreenshot with baseline images stored per project; threshold and animation handling control noise.