⚠️ Breaking Change
Impact Score: 7/10
Cypress: 0.17.4
Source available — automated, not human-reviewed
Component: cypress · Channel: stable. Automated analysis, not a compatibility certification. How this works.
Analysis updated: 2026-11-01.
Breaking-change evidence from the source
Breaking Changes:** - Using subsequent [cy.visit()](https://on.cypress.io/visit)'s *in the same test* will not necessarily force a full page refresh. If all that changed was the hash of a url, then the hash changes will take affect **without** a full page refresh. This matches the behavior of a real browser. Previously [cy.visit()](https://on.cypress.io/visit) always forced a full page refresh and this was not correct.
⚡ Executive Summary (TL;DR)
Cypress v0.17.4. Source highlight: *Released 09/12/2016*
Who Does This Impact? (Role-Based Analysis)
💻 Software Engineers & Devs
Check the source notes against the package and APIs you use before upgrading.
📊 Product & Engineering Leads
Use the documented changes to assess relevance to your product; release frequency alone is not a quality measure.
⚙️ DevOps & Security
Verify the target version, runtime requirements and rollback procedure in the official documentation.
⚠️ Breaking Changes & Deprecations (1)
- Breaking Changes:** - Using subsequent [cy.visit()](https://on.cypress.io/visit)'s *in the same test* will not necessarily force a full page refresh. If all that changed was the hash of a url, then the hash changes will take affect **without** a full page refresh. This matches the behavior of a real browser. Previously [cy.visit()](https://on.cypress.io/visit) always forced a full page refresh and this was not correct.
🔧 Bug Fixes & Patches (2)
- Fixed a regression in `0.17.2` which caused **separate** tests that were visiting the same URL not to actually visit the new URL and eventually time out. We've updated some of our internal QA processes around this because we rarely have regressions and they are a pretty big deal. Fixes #225.
- Fixed displaying `(null)` contentType when a cy.visit() returned a `404` status code. We now only display `contentType` when one exists.
📄 View Raw Release Notes (Original Developer Log)
*Released 09/12/2016*
**Breaking Changes:**
- Using subsequent [cy.visit()](https://on.cypress.io/visit)'s *in the same test* will not necessarily force a full page refresh. If all that changed was the hash of a url, then the hash changes will take affect **without** a full page refresh. This matches the behavior of a real browser. Previously [cy.visit()](https://on.cypress.io/visit) always forced a full page refresh and this was not correct.
**Features:**
- Using [cy.visit()](https://on.cypress.io/visit) now acts *exactly* how modifying the URL in a real browser works. This means that if you visit a url with a hash in it, instead of forcing a full page refresh, it will now simply modify the hash route as if you had manually changed it. This more accurately reflects real user behavior. Previously this was impossible to do with Cypress other than manually altering `window.location.hash`.
**Bugfixes:**
- Fixed a regression in `0.17.2` which caused **separate** tests that were visiting the same URL not to actually visit the new URL and eventually time out. We've updated some of our internal QA processes around this because we rarely have regressions and they are a pretty big deal. Fixes [#225](https://github.com/cypress-io/cypress/issues/225).
- Fixed displaying `(null)` contentType when a [cy.visit()](https://on.cypress.io/visit) returned a `404` status code. We now only display `contentType` when one exists.