Baseline Updates

When to Use

Use this after triaging a diff in the report and deciding "this change is intentional — accept the new baseline."

Decision

Situation	Command
Update all snapshots	npx playwright test --update-snapshots
Update only matching tests (recommended)	npx playwright test --update-snapshots --grep "test title"
Single spec file	npx playwright test tests/header.spec.ts -u

Pattern

Full triage → update → confirm workflow:

1. Open report          → npx playwright show-report
2. Triage failed tests  → confirm intentional
3. Update baselines     → npx playwright test -u --grep "<test title>"
4. Re-run               → npx playwright test --grep "<test title>"
5. Confirm green        → all baselines match
6. Commit baselines     → git add tests/**/*-snapshots/

Why There Is No Approve Button

The Playwright maintainers intentionally decline to add this: an "approve" click that auto-runs --update-snapshots removes the friction that makes baseline updates an explicit engineering action. Auto-accept is how regressions ship.

Community workflows fill this gap with PR-comment bots (/approve-snapshots) that re-run --update-snapshots in CI and commit back to the PR branch — but this is outside the core report.

Common Mistakes

• Wrong: looking for the approve button → Right: it doesn't exist; CLI is the only path
• Wrong: bulk --update-snapshots across the whole suite as a default response → Right: use --grep to scope; bulk accept silently accepts regressions
• Wrong: not committing baselines after updating → Right: local run is green but CI fails because baselines are still old

See Also

• VR Diff Panel
• Baseline Management
• Baseline Update Workflow