Coming from Selenium
Moving tests from Selenium to Playwright — the three things you must change, and everything that stays the same.
Both run the same browsers on the same machines. Your sessions, videos and results look identical.
Three things change. Two of them change quietly, so read those first.
Change 1 — turn your logs back on
On Selenium, console, network and driver logs are on by default.
On Playwright they are off.
Your tests still pass after the move. You just get no logs when one fails. Ask for them:
"testkase:options": { console: true, network: true, driver: true }Change 2 — move platformName, and always set it
On Selenium it sits next to browserName. Here it goes inside testkase:options.
Leaving it out is worse here too. Selenium gives you the newest macOS. Playwright sends Chrome, Edge and Firefox to linux, and we have no Linux browsers. The session is refused.
"testkase:options": { platformName: "windows 11" }Safari is the exception. It falls back to the newest macOS, because it cannot run anywhere else.
Change 3 — a different line for marking tests
driver.executeScript("testkase-name=…") does not exist in Playwright.
Use page.evaluate instead. See Marking tests.
What stays the same
Every one of these means what it meant before, and takes the same values:
accessKey · name · build · runId · tags · recording · resolution · idleTimeout · maxQueueWaitSeconds · tunnel
So does your session page, your video, your run grouping, and how many sessions you can run at once.
Side by side
| Selenium | Playwright | |
|---|---|---|
| Address | https://x:[email protected]/wd/hub | wss://hub.testkase.com/playwright?capabilities=… |
| Where the key goes | In the address, or accessKey | accessKey only |
| How capabilities travel | In the request body | On the end of the address |
platformName | Next to browserName | Inside testkase:options |
| If you leave it out | Newest macOS | Refused, except for Safari |
| Console, network, driver | On | Off |
| Headless | Refused | Works, but not with video |
| Browsers | Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari | The same four |
| Languages | Six | Four |
| A refusal | An error message | A close code, like 4400 |
Which one should you use?
Stay where you are. Neither is faster, and both reach the same browsers.
Pick Playwright if you want headless runs or its built-in parallel runner. Pick Selenium if you need Ruby or PHP, which Playwright does not have.
Running tests in parallel
Run many Playwright tests at once, keep the results together, and know what happens when you ask for more than you have.
Overview
Run your Appium tests on real iPhones and real Android phones, your Espresso tests on real Android phones, and your XCUITest tests on real iPhones and iPads. Appium uses the same connection and access key as your Selenium suite.