Playwright

Browser automation for visual regression and accessibility smoke-tests. Replaces Cypress in my 2026 stack.

Why I switched

Playwright runs faster than Cypress on the same test suite. Native support for Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit; no third-party plugins needed. Better debugging UX (the trace viewer). Real keyboard / mouse API for accessibility testing.

What I use it for

E2E smoke tests on every WP build (5 — 10 critical flows). axe-playwright for automated accessibility scans. Visual regression via BackstopJS with Playwright as the rendering engine. CI runs all three on every PR.

License

Apache 2.0. Free to use. Maintained by Microsoft.