Playwright
Playwright CI on GitHub Actions
Browser downloads and serial test execution dominate every run.
75s → 3s
Browser install
32m → 6m
E2E suite
Browser downloads and serial test execution dominate every run.
Why it happens
Playwright downloads browser binaries on each run and defaults to limited workers in CI.
What to change
- Cache ~/.cache/ms-playwright keyed on the Playwright version
- Set workers to the runner core count rather than the CI default of one
- Shard across runners with --shard and merge the blob reports
- Install only the browsers you actually test
Playwright on runnerhut
yaml
jobs: e2e: strategy: matrix: shard: [1, 2, 3, 4] runs-on: runnerhut-8vcpu-ubuntu-2404 steps: - uses: actions/checkout@v4 - run: npm ci - run: npx playwright install --with-deps chromium - run: npx playwright test --shard=${{ matrix.shard }}/4 --workers=8The only runnerhut-specific line is `runs-on: runnerhut-8vcpu-ubuntu-2404`. Everything else is standard GitHub Actions — the same actions, the same secrets and the same permissions model you use today.
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Start free. Migrating away is the same one line, and we publish that diff too.