🔝JavaScript UI Test Automation Frameworks - latest updates in 2025 part 2

_config.yml

Today I have prepared an equally interesting article. Playwright, WebdriverIO, and Cypress are currently the top testing frameworks. They’re always adding new features because of the competition. If you’re an automation or software development engineer, it’s crucial to stay on top of the latest functionalities. This article will give you the latest updates from early 2025.

Cypress

14.0.1 | 14.3.3

Breaking Changes:

Firefox versions 135 and above are now automated with WebDriver BiDi instead of Chrome Devtools Protocol.
Cypress.stop() is now available to stop the Cypress App on the current machine while tests are running. This can be useful for stopping test execution upon failures or other predefined conditions.
The UI above the application under test now displays in dark mode.
The cy.press() command is now available. It supports dispatching native Tab keyboard events to the browser.
Lots of bugfixes and performance optimizations

Playwright

Version 1.51 | 1.52

New option indexedDB for browserContext.storageState() allows to save and restore IndexedDB contents. Useful when your application uses IndexedDB API to store authentication tokens, like Firebase Authentication.

Here is an example following the authentication guide:

import { test as setup, expect } from '@playwright/test';
import path from 'path';

const authFile = path.join(__dirname, '../playwright/.auth/user.json');

setup('authenticate', async ({ page }) => {
  await page.goto('/');
  // ... perform authentication steps ...

  // make sure to save indexedDB
  await page.context().storageState({ path: authFile, indexedDB: true });
});

New “Copy prompt” button on errors in the HTML report, trace viewer and UI mode. Click to copy a pre-filled LLM prompt that contains the error message and useful context for fixing the error.
New option visible for locator.filter() allows matching only visible elements.

test('some test', async ({ page }) => {
  // Ignore invisible todo items.
  const todoItems = page.getByTestId('todo-item').filter({ visible: true });
  // Check there are exactly 3 visible ones.
  await expect(todoItems).toHaveCount(3);
});

Set option testConfig.captureGitInfo to capture git information into testConfig.metadata. ``` import { defineConfig } from ‘@playwright/test’;

export default defineConfig({ captureGitInfo: { commit: true, diff: true } });

- New method expect(locator).toContainClass() to ergonomically assert individual class names on the element.

await expect(page.getByRole(‘listitem’, { name: ‘Ship v1.52’ })).toContainClass(‘done’);

- Aria Snapshots got two new properties: /children for strict matching and /url for links.

await expect(locator).toMatchAriaSnapshot(`

list
- /children: equal
- listitem: Feature A
- listitem:
  - link “Feature B”:
    - /url: “https://playwright.dev” );``
New property testProject.workers allows to specify the number of concurrent worker processes to use for a test project. The global limit of property testConfig.workers still applies.
New testConfig.failOnFlakyTests option to fail the test run if any flaky tests are detected, similarly to –fail-on-flaky-tests. This is useful for CI/CD environments where you want to ensure that all tests are stable before deploying.
New property testResult.annotations contains annotations for each test retry.

Webdriver IO

v9.6.1 | v9.13.0

Use checkVisibility for display checks
Accessibility Support for Browserstack app automate sessions
Add deepLink command
Add restartApp
Distinguish Cucumber PENDING status in reporters
Allow more options for screenshot taking with Bidi
Support WebSocket options at the BiDi connection
Add “options” parameter to “terminateApp” command
Introduce defineConfig function to create a typed configuration object
Change gridProxyDetails request from GET to POST method
Lots of bugfixes and performance optimizations

These are the latest updates we received in 2025. We continue to follow the development and updates of the most popular tools in the world of JavaScript testing

Thanks to everyone who read this article, I hope you found it useful.

Don’t hold yourself back from rating or commenting. You can also subscribe to the e-mail newsletter so that you don’t miss interesting things from the world of testing and development.