Actionability

Playwright does a range of actionability checks on the elements before performing certain actions. These checks ensure that action behaves as expected, for example Playwright does not click on a disabled button.

Playwright waits until all the relevant actionability checks pass before performing an action. This means that action will fail with TimeoutError if checks do not pass within the specified timeout.

Some actions like page.click() support {force: true} option that disable non-essential actionability checks, for example passing force to click() method will not check that the target element actually receives click events.

Visible

Element is considered visible when it has non-empty bounding box and does not have visibility:hidden computed style. Note that elements of zero size or with display:none are not considered visible.

Stable

Element is considered stable when it has maintained the same bounding box for at least two consecutive animation frames.

Enabled

Element is considered enabled when it is not a <button>, <select> or <input> with a disabled property set.

Editable

Element is considered editable when it does not have readonly property set.

Receiving events

Element is considered receiving pointer events when it is the hit target of the pointer event at the action point. For example, when clicking at the point (10;10), Playwright checks whether some other element (usually an overlay) will instead capture the click at (10;10).

Attached

Element is considered attached when it is connected to a Document or a ShadowRoot.

Attached check differs between selector-based and handle-based actions, like page.click(selector, options) as opposite to elementHandle.click(options):

• For selector-based actions, Playwright first waits for an element matching selector to be attached to the DOM, and then checks that element is still attached before performing the action. If element was detached, the action is retried from the start.
• For handle-based actions, Playwright throws if the element is not attached.

For example, consider a scenario where Playwright will click Sign Up button regardless of when the page.click() call was made:

• page is checking that user name is unique and Sign Up button is disabled;
• after checking with the server, the disabled Sign Up button is replaced with another one that is now enabled.