Playwright Visual Regression Testing: A Production Guide to Baselines, Flake, and CI
Native Playwright visual regression is free to start and expensive to scale. The cost shows up in CI, not on day one. Cross-OS rendering breaks pixel diffs: Windows, macOS, and Linux render fonts and spacing differently, so the same code produces different baselines on different machines. Component snapshots beat full-page captures: smaller scope means clearer failure signal, fewer timeouts, and less flake on asset-heavy pages.