Where Does Playwright Save Traces and Videos?
Playwright writes traces, screenshots, and videos into test-results in your project, controlled by the trace option.
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Playwright Test drops its artifacts in the test output directory, test-results by default, next to blob reports and the HTML report data. Traces land as trace.zip files you open with npx playwright show-trace.
Recording is off unless you ask. The trace option decides what gets kept: off records nothing, on keeps everything, retain-on-failure and on-first-retry keep only the interesting runs. Screenshots and video follow the same modes through their own options, so set all three together.
Where Playwright stores this, by platform
<project>\test-results\*.trace.zip
Default outputDir for the test runner. Change it with outputDir in playwright.config. Open any trace with npx playwright show-trace <file>. Videos and screenshots from the same run sit beside the trace.
<project>/test-results/*.trace.zip
Same default as Windows and Linux. Enable tracing in the config with use: { trace: 'on-first-retry' } or record manually with context.tracing and a stop path of your choosing.
<project>/test-results/*.trace.zip
Same default. In CI, upload test-results (or blob-report plus traces) as artifacts before the next run overwrites them. Live traces also stream into traces/ inside the output directory during execution.
Frequently asked questions
No trace files appear after my Playwright run. Why?
Tracing defaults to off. Set trace in playwright.config, for example 'retain-on-failure' to keep traces only for failed tests, or 'on' to keep everything. Passing tests with retain modes leave no trace behind by design.
How do I open a Playwright trace file?
Run npx playwright show-trace against the trace.zip, or upload it to the online Trace Viewer. The viewer shows the timeline, DOM snapshots, network log, console output, and screenshots per action.
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