2026/8/19
Serial mode in Playwright's thumbnail

Serial mode in Playwright

  • Playwright

In Playwright, serial mode is useful to treat a group of tests as a single lifecycle. If the previous test fails, the remaining tests are skipped, and the entire group are retried from the first test.

import { test } from "@playwright/test";test.describe.configure({ mode: "serial" });test.beforeAll(() => {  // This code is called on every retry.});test("The first step", () => {});test("The second step depending on the first step", () => {});test("The third step depending on the second step", () => {});

We can specify a timeout for each test function using test.setTimeout to prevent extra waiting time even if any interaction fails (fail fast).