Playwright locator timeout is too high

[julienw]

Describe the bug

From what I see, the timeout I get when a locator doesn't match is 30 seconds, which is a lot.

As a reference, the default timeout in playwright itself seems to be 15 sec, and when using the webdriver.io provider, it seems to be reduced to 5 seconds which seems good enough to me.

Also I couldn't find the place to configure it.

Reproduction

Please tell me if you need a reproduction for this.

System Info

System:
    OS: Linux 6.7 Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm) 12 (bookworm)
    CPU: (16) x64 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-11900H @ 2.50GHz
    Memory: 36.15 GB / 62.54 GB
    Container: Yes
    Shell: 5.2.15 - /bin/bash
  Binaries:
    Node: 24.8.0 - /home/julien/.nvm/versions/node/v24.8.0/bin/node
    Yarn: 1.22.22 - /usr/bin/yarn
    npm: 11.6.0 - /home/julien/.nvm/versions/node/v24.8.0/bin/npm
    pnpm: 10.9.0 - /home/julien/.local/share/pnpm/pnpm
    bun: 1.0.29 - /home/julien/.bun/bin/bun
    Deno: 2.0.0 - /home/julien/.cargo/bin/deno
    Watchman: 4.9.0 - /usr/bin/watchman
  Browsers:
    Chrome: 142.0.7444.175
    Chromium: 142.0.7444.175
    Firefox: 140.5.0esr
    Firefox Developer Edition: 140.5.0esr
  npmPackages:
    @vitest/browser: ^4.0.14 => 4.0.14 
    @vitest/browser-playwright: ^4.0.14 => 4.0.14 
    vitest: ^4.0.14 => 4.0.14

Used Package Manager

npm

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• Read the Contributing Guidelines.
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• Check that there isn't already an issue that reports the same bug to avoid creating a duplicate.
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• The provided reproduction is a minimal reproducible example of the bug.

[sheremet-va]

Playwright locators don't actually have a timeout. They timeout when the test timeouts (this is also how it works in playwright). Default timeout for tests is 30 seconds in browser mode. Funnily enough, the docs are wrong about the number which was 15 at one point: https://vitest.dev/config/testtimeout.html

Seems like it was changed in #8705 - maybe by accident?

[julienw]

Ah interesting, I thought the matcher was producing the error because the error string isn't a generic one like "test timeout" but rather:

VitestBrowserElementError: Cannot find element with locator: getByRole('heading', { name: 'Usrs', level: 1 })
...
Caused by: Error: Matcher did not succeed in time.

[sheremet-va]

Yes, it's done for better DX. The timeout itself is dynamic and based on the time left until the test timeout

[sheremet-va]

So to configure it you can change the testTimeout value or set a static value via actionTimeout:

export default defineConfig({
  test: {
    testTimeout: 15_000,
    browser: {
      provider: playwright({ actionTimeout: 5_000 }),
    },
  },
})

[julienw]

Thanks!
I tried adding actionTimeout: 5_000, but it seems to be about 2 seconds, no matter the value I use... Isn't it weird?

[AriPerkkio]

Seems like it was changed in #8705 - maybe by accident?

Yes, this seems like a rebase/merge conflict mistake. Not intended.

[sheremet-va]

Thanks!
I tried adding actionTimeout: 5_000, but it seems to be about 2 seconds, no matter the value I use... Isn't it weird?

Is this still an issue? In most of your issues you are using webdeiverio which has its own timeout mechanism, do you use playwright? Can you provide a small reproduction, please

[julienw]

Thanks!
I tried adding actionTimeout: 5_000, but it seems to be about 2 seconds, no matter the value I use... Isn't it weird?

Is this still an issue? Can you provide a small reproduction, please

Yeah it looks like it's still here.

Here is how you can reproduce:

# Note this is in the branch "issue-2"
git clone --branch issue-2 https://github.com/julienw/issue-vitest-browser
cd issue-vitest-browser
npm i
npm test

=> despite I added actionTimeout: 5000 the timeout seems to be 2 seconds.

Without actionTimeout then I get 15 seconds now.

In most of your issues you are using webdeiverio which has its own timeout mechanism, do you use playwright?

Yeah I use both: playwright for chrome, webdriver.io for firefox. This is the way I found to have my tests run properly in both browsers... vitest makes it easy, thanks :-)