Impact Score: 5/10
Playwright v1.38.1 — Release Notes & Engineering Impact
Source available — automated, not human-reviewed
Component: playwright · Channel: stable. Automated analysis, not a compatibility certification. How this works.
Analysis updated: 2026-11-01.
⚡ Executive Summary (TL;DR)
Playwright v1.38.1. Source highlight: Chromium 117.0.5938.62
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.
📄 View Raw Release Notes (Original Developer Log)
### Highlights
https://github.com/microsoft/playwright/issues/27071 - expect(value).toMatchSnapshot() deprecation announcement on V1.38
https://github.com/microsoft/playwright/issues/27072 - [BUG] PWT trace viewer fails to load trace and throws TypeError
https://github.com/microsoft/playwright/issues/27073 - [BUG] RangeError: Invalid time value
https://github.com/microsoft/playwright/issues/27087 - [REGRESSION]: npx playwright test --list prints all tests twice
https://github.com/microsoft/playwright/issues/27113 - [REGRESSION]: No longer able to extend PlaywrightTest.Matchers type for locators and pages
https://github.com/microsoft/playwright/issues/27144 - [BUG]can not display trace
https://github.com/microsoft/playwright/issues/27163 - [REGRESSION] Single Quote Wrongly Escaped by Locator When Using Unicode Flag
https://github.com/microsoft/playwright/issues/27181 - [BUG] evaluate serializing fails at 1.38
### Browser Versions
* Chromium 117.0.5938.62
* Mozilla Firefox 117.0
* WebKit 17.0
This version was also tested against the following stable channels:
* Google Chrome 116
* Microsoft Edge 116