[Update: Reimplemented in Cypress 10.7] Cypress Studio’s removal in Cypress 10.0

[pstakoun]

Update as of August 30, 2022: Cypress Studio has been reimplemented in Cypress 10 as of version 10.7.0! Please see #21561 (comment) for more info.

We’re excited to share that Cypress 10.0 will soon be released. It’s packed with new features, like first-class support for Component Testing.

Cypress Studio, the experimental feature first introduced in 6.3.0, will be removed in Cypress 10.0. For more information about why, check out this blog post.

As we assess what we learned about Studio during its experimental period, we’d like to hear your feedback.

• What does Studio mean to you and your organization?
• What would make Studio more valuable?
• Did Studio solve any challenges you faced with other test generation solutions?

Please share your thoughts below. Your feedback will help us prioritize features to make writing Cypress tests even easier.

Edit (17th Aug 2022): We are actively working on this. See: #21561 (comment)

Edit (30th Aug 2022): We have reimplemented Cypress Studio into Cypress 10 as of version 10.7.0, which was released today! Please see our blog post for more info.

[sarala02]

This is feature is very useful as no coding knowledge required also very easy to add assertions as well ,I would recommend to keep this feature going forward .

[howardpanton]

This is a useful feature for creating spec files, we use it daily at our organisation

[tmbarbour]

Our team really likes the integrated Cypress Studio recorder in Cypress Test Runner. The ability to generate tests right in the Cypress UI, the ease of recording and adding steps to existing tests and then for it to run immediately and use Cypress Playground to fine tune the test are used extensively. To be able to create a single test offline, save it to a file, run a command to convert and then import it to your project is at least a hack, but a big vote to get it integrated back into Cypress in the future.

[bjan99]

I really like the integrated Cypress Studio recorder. I use it every day. I find it very helpful to make a quick first pass at creating my test. Then I easily clean it up a bit. I also use it to make a quick addition to an already created test. Saves me a lot of time. I have also used it when showing other people Cypress for the first time. They love it and it gets them interested in Cypress. I looked at the Cypress plugin for DevTools Recorder, but it is not as easy as the integrated Cypress Studio. Please bring it back.

[jonwest3]

I think Studio is very valuable. We switched from Selenium to Cypress because of the ease of use and integrated Cypress Studio was a big part of that. My team and I give a big vote also to get it integrated back into Cypress. Glad I just heard about it's removal. I was pitching we get Cypress Dashboard, but will now hold off on that until I see if it get's integrated back in soon.

[michelnicholas]

Studio is very valuable I like all the features currently with Cypress, it really helps me and my team understand why and where exactly scenarios are failing. Its is highly valuable please don't not remove if anything don't remove just add. If you remove i probably will not update lol.

[dwelsh1]

I have used Cypress studio to get many of my hesistant manual testers to take the jump into automation.

While recording test scenarios won't create a 100% complete test script, it is an easy way to start one. When they see that work, then they are excited and want to learn more to be able to add/change to make the script great.

With tools like Selector Playground and Cypress Studio, the Cypress team has opened the door to automation to everyone.

The Cypress plugin/Devtool recorder is not a good replacement compared to the integrated Studio.

Yes, Studio is very valuable especially to those just starting out in automation, please bring it back.

[ViktorijaFilipov]

My team is also heavily using Cypress Studio. We find it an amazing tool for people that are just getting into automation. As previous comments said - selector playground, debugging, and other features really make our lives easier. Please support it in the future, we need it.

[SaraCooperQA]

I think Cypress Studio is very valuable and should not be removed. And this is why I think so.

I was the only QA and a strictly manual tester with no programming experience on my team. We had no automated tests and the team wanted me to look into starting writing them. A developer mentioned Selenium. So I started down a path with Selenium with Java. After 3 days and a lot of help getting everything set up to run on my laptop and a lot of help writing my first automated smoke test, it was done but every now and then would fail.

During a stand-up meeting I said I was struggling and another developer mentioned I might want to try Cypress. He heard it was pretty east to get started with. I found the cypress site and read the nice Getting Started section. I got it installed without needing any help, so off to a great start.

I wanted to see how my Cypress journey compared to my Selenium journey so was keeping track of time. I wanted to see how long it would take me to write the same test in Cypress. After just under 2 hours I had the test completed and had ran it several dozen times and no strange failures every now and then. The 2 hours included setup, some cypress documentation reading and some time googling/researching. All this with not having to bother the developers! It was about 30 minutes of actual test writing. Much better than 3 days with Selenium.

During my research I came across a great article by Filip Hric called Getting Started with Cypress Studio for Test Automation https://applitools.com/blog/getting-started-cypress-studio/. As an experiment, I wanted to see how long it would take to create the same smoke test using Cypress Studio. It took less than 5 minutes to generate the test. I did some cleanup to it and added a few assertions that I couldn’t see a way to add from Studio. For example there is a dropdown that I wanted to assert has 3 items in it.

All together I spent about 10 minutes cleaning and adding to the Studio generated test for a total of 15 minutes. So 15 minutes total for Cypress Studio vs 30 minutes writing it myself. A great time savings! Your mileage may vary depending on many factors such as your overall automation and programming experience, the length / complexity of the test you are writing, the app your testing etc.

So for me, I love Cypress Studio and still use it every day several months later. I think if Studio was promoted more by Cypress, it would be used by more people. It would have been nice to have a Using Cypress Studio in the Getting Started section of the Cypress docs. The only reason I knew about Studio at all was by luck coming across the article by Filip.

With Cypress version 10 coming out, I was hoping Studio would no longer be an experimental feature and maybe would have some small improvements, but then saw the very sad news it was being removed.

Sorry for the long post and thanks for reading if you made it this far!

[SaraCooperQA]

Some improvements for Studio could be having some options (since not everyone may want them) like:

• Not including the Generated by Cypress Studio comments.
• Chaining commands like if you have a clear line and then a type text line just chain them.
• Options to have a single cy and no ;
• More assertions like a count for a dropdown.

A small example of a generated test and then a cleaned up version. It would be nice to have some options to get the cleaned up one without doing the cleanup manually each time:

/* ==== Test Created with Cypress Studio ==== /
it('clear-completed', function() {
/ ==== Generated with Cypress Studio ==== /
cy.visit('localhost:8000');
cy.get('.new-todo').clear();
cy.get('.new-todo').type('Clear Me{enter}');
cy.get('.toggle').check();
cy.get('.clear-completed').click();
cy.get('.new-todo').should('have.attr', 'placeholder', 'What needs to be done?');
/ ==== End Cypress Studio ==== */
});

After cleanup:

it('clear-completed', function() {
cy
.visit('localhost:8000')
.get('.new-todo').clear().type('Clear Me{enter}')
.get('.toggle').check()
.get('.clear-completed').click()
.get('.new-todo').should('have.attr', 'placeholder', 'What needs to be done?')

});

[smcintosh881]

Im bummed to hear about cypress studio being dropped. Not only did it make writing tests incredibly quick, I see a lot of potential for non engineering job roles to be able to leverage the tools. PMs/QA/Management could easily help document these flows.

As a tool it also fits nicely into BDT development style

[peans99]

This is a really bad news. We were looking at acquiring license but without this feature we will have to rethink what we will do and look at alternative

[peans99]

no only that the google recorder don't work well with our react dynamic front end so its really not an option right now. that bring back selenium forward unless an alternative is borned even if its a paid option

[JoshuaGoddard]

I use the studio daily to quickly grab tag ID's and get the basics of the flow started. There are work arounds, but nothing works quite as well as the integrated studio. Sad to see it go.

[drdreo]

What does Studio mean to you and your organization? - it was a nice DX feature
What would make Studio more valuable? - finding the right selector is hard, our HTML structure is rather complex and we always had to polish those.
Did Studio solve any challenges you faced with other test generation solutions? - we never used any but manual generation

[Pachat]

The Studio is so necessary and useful that I instantly revert to 9.7.0
And will not move from it until it is back in new Cypress versions.

Otherwise I'll seek some other solution than Cypress.

[luqy]

How to restore to 9.7.0

[Pachat]

It was easy in my case. I just had

• to reinstall >npm i [email protected] --save
• verify version >npx cypress -v

and in case you let cypress 10 to do the renamings

• to rename back cypress\e2e to cypress\integration
• to rename back cypress\support\e2e.js to cypress\support\index.js

[luqy]

I tried to uninstall and reinstall it, but found that it was not completely uninstalled, and there were abnormal errors
I'll try the second method

[Pachat]

It was not necessary to uninstall
Just run npm i [email protected] --save in the same directory you run the npm i [email protected] --save
and then, do the renaimings of e2e

[isolderea]

You also need to revert your support file. Do not forget, I forgot yesterday

[elio-maggini]

Cypress Studio was the killer feature of Cypress, IMO.

Cypress enables a wide range of testing and is the best tool I have used.

But Studio made testing rather complex custom components built with Ionic and Angular very simple - a HUGE lift in test code generation.

So simple in fact that currently Cypress is the ONLY package.json entry that is not on "latest", it remains on 9.7.0.....which, I guess, you will have to pry from my cold, dead hands. :)

[M0BI0S]

This feature was the reason to have choosen cypress as a novice. Now installed, the feature has been removed. Please re-add this feature, it immensly helps to get started.

[lila1-work]

I'm really gutted this has been removed.

I'd been trying to coax a couple of team members off another unsupported version of product because the new one had dropped support for something they used, and they had come round to Cypress purely because of Studio as it was easy to record, copy/paste sections and add a screenshot later too. (It would be a useful feature to add a screenshot in Studio itself though)

I have a couple of non-technical testers and they were using this without trouble, and it meant they could create scripts for the present time and I could help them refactor them later.

It was also nice that it was all in one tool. Having a separate recorder makes it really faffy and makes hesitant testers even less confident in using it.

I'm loathe to remain on another unsupported version of a tool so I may have to find something else.

[pstakoun]

Hi all, I want to provide an update on the current state of Cypress Studio. Typically, we can prioritize feature work in one of two ways: we try to work on a bunch of different projects at the same time and move them all forward bit by bit, or we focus in on a handful and get them over the line and in the hands of users much faster. As of right now, we have made the decision to choose the latter and not continue work on Cypress Studio at this time. We are instead prioritizing the GA release of cy.origin and cy.session (which are both currently in experimental), as well as beginning work for iFrame support (#136) and resolving the common “element is detached from the DOM” error (#7306). This does not mean we have written off Studio indefinitely, but it does mean it will not see much movement over the next few months at the very least. Prioritization is always fluid, which is why we’re still actively monitoring this thread, the existing alternatives, and feedback from other areas. Thanks again for everyone’s feedback on this topic.

[peans99]

I hope the dashboard will remain compatible with version 9.7.0 for the next year as your decide on your priorities we have no intention of moving to 10 at this time.

[carwei]

Based on the feedback in this thread, the sensible thing would be to put Studio in the next handful of stuff to push after the current work. Dropping features (like Studio and the "run all tests in browser" feature) and having them pending indefinitely doesn't make sense for us as end-users.

[rustamd]

Watch them spin it around in couple months into "Look at this incredible enterprise only feature we just developed! Only $9999 a month!1!" (;

[Pachat]

@pstakoun Thank you for giving us information and hope.
It is not a problem if it takes months.
We will wait until the Studio is back to upgrade from 9.7.0

[pkrall520]

Is there a roadmap to add the recorder back, soon? If not then, we will have to downgrade to 9.7

[carwei]

They already said there is none, 3 days ago.

[lmiller1990]

I am looking into it: #22870, will see the logistics of reviving studio in Cy 10. It's not the highest priority, more focus is on cy origin and session, see #21561 (comment), but studio certainly is not forgotten or swept under the rug.

[dwelsh1]

Awesome news @lmiller1990 . Thanks for the update!

[jozzya]

It is a shame that Studio isn't going to be included with Cypress 10.

I think studio flattens the learning curve required to build "useful" cypress tests and get non JS developers involved with writing tests.
Eventually these non developers will find that cypress studio doesn't provide all of the functionality and they will have to learn the framework. However I feel that learning curve is not as big as the non JS would have been exposed to syntax.

I will downgrade from Cypress 10 down to 9.7 as non developer buy-in is more important in my use case.

[Capscreen]

Doesn't make that much sense in my opinion. One of the absolute benefits from your software is its simplicity and fast-pasted possibility to create tests. Aborting this core functionality is something that is probably not that beneficial for anyone.
I understand technical challenges might seem hard but you definitely should work on that.

[elio-maggini]

No Studio support AND component testing doesn't support Angular? Where do I sign up?. 🤕

[pstakoun]

We are very actively working on Angular support for component testing and you may see it in as soon as next month!

[the-dietcoke-ofevil]

Angular support for component testing is here! ~ https://www.cypress.io/blog/2022/08/15/cypress-10-5-0-introducing-angular-component-testing/

[MikeShi42]

Hi everyone! After seeing a lot of the feedback and knowing how awesome Cypress Studio is in Cy v9, my team has spent some time putting together a Cypress plugin that replicates a lot of the original Cypress Studio experience for Cypress v10, so you can one-click start recording test steps right within your test browser.

You can check out our plugin repo here: https://github.com/DeploySentinel/cypress-recorder

This is just the initial release, so would love to hear any feedback on what we've built here!

[plfgavilan]

This contribution is amazing. Looking forward to check it out!!
I will give you my feedback!!

[SaraCooperQA]

@MikeShi42 Thanks for your contribution. I tried it out and it looks good for an initial release. Are you going to include the ability to right click and add Assertions like in Cypress Studio such as have text, have class, have attr, be visible etc?

Also, In Chrome and Firefox when I right click I see Record hover over element, but I do not see Assert/wait for selected text.

Thanks

[MikeShi42]

Hi @SaraCooperQA that's awesome to hear. Right now to record assert/wait for required text, you'll want to highlight the text content you want to assert on before right clicking it (I know it's unfortunately a little confusing right now). Then the assert/wait for selected text assertion should open up.

As for being able to use different assertions, we want to open up more selector flexibility as opposed to just the one we pick out of the box (we do try to stick by best practices!), but I don't have a firm ETA on that. Though if you (or anyone else) has some spare cycles and would like to put in some contributions, we'd really appreciate it!

[donwelsh]

@MikeShi42 Unfortunately I don't have the coding skill to contribute, but always happy to test and write documentation if needed.

[jonwest3]

Hi @MikeShi42. Yes, thanks for the contribution. I tried it and while it is better than the other solutions out there, it is still not as integrated, as easy to use, or as feature rich as Studio was. I am still hoping they bring Studio back into v10 soon.

[rgembalik]

To me:

• Studio was not cannot-live-without-it feature, but definitely sped-up initial test drafting.
• Flow introduced with Chrome Dev Tools recorder and converter is not as comfortable to use (mainly due to the conversion step)
• Could chrome-dev-tools version be updated to improve support? Maybe. I think if it was possible for the cypress recorder to launch some sort of chromium instance ready for recording and automatically converted its output to cypress format, then I would be happier about the entire conversion.
• Can cypress function without a recorder? Yeah, although I might have a hard time convincing my team to use cypress again or to update to 10. Especially since recordings in chrome dev tools do support puppeteer

[Zujaj]

I was just about to start Cypress studio after adding the latest version and found out that it's gone! Please kindly restore it, it's really an awesome feature especially for automating manual QA steps. Hope the cypress team would bring it to life soon.

[lmiller1990]

Hello all. Thank you for your continued feedback on Studio – it’s clear to us that it’s an important tool in a variety of use cases and workflows. We’re excited to announce that we’ve reprioritized restoring Studio in Cypress 10 based on your feedback. I am working on this now. You can track progress and what needs to be done to use Studio in Cypress 10 here. #23230.

Please note that we intend to bring back Studio exactly as it was in Cypress 9, so Studio will not work for Component Testing (on initial release). If you need Studio in Component Testing, please let us know by commenting on this thread. Your feedback will help us in future iterations.

[pstakoun]

Hey all. I'm very happy to let everyone know that we have reimplemented Cypress Studio into Cypress 10 as of version 10.7.0, which was released today! Please see our blog post for more info.

Thank you for your feedback. The best way for us to prioritize what we work on is by taking into account what our users have to say. I encourage you to direct additional feedback to our Beta Feedback discussion, as we will be tracking that thread now that Studio is back in v10.

[plfgavilan]

great news!! Thank you very much!