playwright trace.zip corrupted after browser crash: how to open

TL;DR

A crash cuts the zip mid-write, but the trace data written before the crash is usually intact inside the partial archive. Repair the zip structure with a recovery tool, extract the raw trace files, and open the extracted folder directly. You lose the tail of the run, but everything before the crash stays readable.

Error

playwright trace.zip corrupted after browser crash: how to open

npx playwright show-trace trace.zip fails with a zip error (bad central directory or unexpected end of file).

Steps

1. Try the normal open first and capture the exact error: npx playwright show-trace trace.zip. Expected output: a specific corruption error rather than a vague failure.
2. Attempt zip repair with zip -FF trace.zip writing to a new file, or extract what 7z can salvage. Expected output: a repaired archive, possibly with a warning about the truncated tail.
3. If repair fails, extract raw: unzip the partial file ignoring errors and copy out trace.trace, trace.network, and the resources folder. Expected output: the individual trace files on disk even though the zip wrapper is broken.
4. Open the extracted directory with npx playwright show-trace pointed at the folder path. Expected output: the trace viewer loads actions and screenshots up to the crash point.
5. For the next run, enable tracing with screenshots and snapshots so a future crash still leaves per-action artifacts. Expected output: a config change that makes the next crash less costly.

When to use

• show-trace errors on a trace.zip from a crashed run.
• The trace viewer loads but stops mid-run.
• You need the network log from before the crash.

When not to use

• No trace file was written at all (enable tracing first).
• The trace opens fine but is empty (the test produced no actions).
• The corruption is in a manually zipped archive (re-zip it properly).

Variant phrasings

Trace viewer blank after crash

The viewer needs trace.trace at minimum; if only resources survived, browse the screenshots folder directly.

Missing resources in partial trace

Resource files for the last actions are the first casualty of truncation; earlier actions usually keep theirs.

Screenshot-only recovery

With screenshots enabled, the resources folder holds a PNG per action; you can reconstruct the failure sequence without the viewer.

Why it happens

Playwright streams trace events into the zip as the run progresses and only writes the zip central directory at the end. A browser crash kills the process before that final write, so the archive wrapper is broken while the already-written event data inside it is fine.

Edge cases

• Repair tools can produce a zip that opens but silently drops the last few actions; treat the tail as unreliable.
• Very large traces (video enabled) corrupt more often on crash; consider screenshots-only tracing for crash-prone suites.
• If the crash also killed the Node process, the trace file may be zero bytes; check file size before attempting repair.

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/psta3LTTk1mOJWoRIKbIt9QA

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/psta3LTTk1mOJWoRIKbIt9QA

Thread query: playwright trace.zip corrupted after browser crash: how to open

TL;DR: A crash cuts the zip mid-write, but the trace data written before the crash is usually intact inside the partial archive. Repair the zip structure with a recovery tool, extract the raw trace files, and open the extracted folder directly. You lose the tail of the run, but everything before the crash stays readable.