playwright video recording failed: disk space fix

TL;DR

Videos fail when the disk fills or the recorder misconfigures. Record only failures, clean artifacts between runs, and size the runner disk for the parallel worker count.

Error

Warning: video recording failed for test "checkout flow": unable to write video file.

Steps

1. Check disk: df -h on the runner. Expected: confirms whether space is the issue.
2. Set use: { video: 'retain-on-failure' } in config. Expected: passing tests stop writing video.
3. Delete test-results/ at the start of each CI job. Expected: no accumulation across runs.
4. If videos are still huge, lower video: { mode } size or disable for the fastest specs. Expected: artifact size under control.
5. Re-run a failing test and confirm the video exists. Expected: failures have video, passes do not waste disk.

When to use

• Missing videos on failures, or disk-full runners.
• CI with small disks and many parallel workers.

When not to use

• Traces missing (separate option).
• You need video of passes for compliance (then provision disk).

Tool compatibility

• Playwright 1.30 through latest; video option in config.

Variant phrasings

Playwright did not save video on failure

Check the video mode; off and on-first-retry behave differently.

video file is 0 bytes

The recorder started but the disk filled mid-write.

Why it happens

Video is written per test per worker. Parallel workers multiply disk usage, and small CI disks fill fast.

Edge cases

• video: 'on' for every test is the most expensive setting; prefer retain-on-failure.
• WebKit video encoding is slower; on weak runners it can time out the test teardown.
• Uploading videos to artifact storage also needs bandwidth budget.

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_u2jiftSEKJ2uoXXSYkxbzg