[Bug]: Trace files of discarded chunks and temporary screenshots stay in the worker artifacts folder until the worker exits #44086

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1. Yury Semikhatsky (yury-s)

   added

   agent-triage

   on Nov 12, 2026
2. microsoft-playwright-automation commented on Nov 12, 2026

   

   microsoft-playwright-automationBot

   on Nov 12, 2026 – with microsoft/playwright-automation · Hidden as outdated

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3. microsoft-playwright-automation commented on Nov 13, 2026

   

   microsoft-playwright-automationBot

   on Nov 13, 2026 – with microsoft/playwright-automation

   Contributor

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   Hi, I'm the Playwright bot. I reproduced this and prepared a fix.

   Reproduced on 1.66.0-next, commit c59cf2040091ece8b59f56dd59a6d0e9080a7dfd, on Chromium, Firefox and WebKit. Discarding a chunk did not delete its trace or chunk-only files, and passing tests did not delete temporary screenshots. The proposed patch deletes these files after pending writes finish.

   Network files and content-addressed resources keep their existing lifetime: they can be shared across chunks and contexts. This patch does not make the entire artifacts folder empty.

   Condensed repro

   Run with trace: 'retain-on-failure', screenshot: 'only-on-failure', and one worker per browser:

   import fs from 'fs';
   import path from 'path';
   import { test as base, expect } from '@playwright/test';
   
   const test = base.extend({
     inspectArtifacts: [async ({}, use, workerInfo) => {
       await use();
       const dir = path.join(workerInfo.project.outputDir,
           '.playwright-artifacts-' + workerInfo.workerIndex);
       const files = fs.readdirSync(dir, { recursive: true }).map(String);
       expect(files.filter(file => /\.(trace|png|jpeg)$/.test(file))).toEqual([]);
     }, { scope: 'worker', auto: true }],
   });
   
   for (let i = 0; i < 3; ++i) {
     test('passing ' + i, async ({ page }) => {
       await page.setContent('<button>Click</button>');
       await page.getByRole('button').click();
     });
   }

   Before the fix, each worker retained six .trace files, three temporary .png files and screencast frames. With the fix, none of those files remained. Six .network files remained in both cases.

   What I ran

   All runs were headless on Linux, using the checkout's 1.66.0-next build.

   Check	Without the fix	With the fix
   Three passing tests per browser, Chromium / Firefox / WebKit	Left discarded traces, screenshots and frames on all three	No discarded traces, screenshots or frames on all three
   Extended TR-013, Chromium / Firefox / WebKit	Discarded trace remained on all three	Trace, screencast, screen snapshots and aria snapshots removed; saved traces preserved
   Extended screenshot-only-on-failure artifact test, Chromium	Temporary screenshots remained	Temporary screenshots removed; failure attachments preserved

   The full library tracing file passed: 131 tests, with one existing skip, across all three browsers. The artifact and trace runner files passed all 71 tests in aggregate. Three initial server-fixture timeouts occurred when the library and runner suites competed for the same ports; those three tests passed when rerun separately.

   npm run build, npm run flint and git diff --check passed. The final regression assertions were checked again without the fixes and then with them. The reported 1.65.0 release, headed mode, Windows and macOS were not tested.

   Draft PR: #44089

   _{Triaged on Linux by the Playwright bot - agent run}
4. Johanl001 commented on Nov 13, 2026

   

   Dhanraj Deshmukh (Johanl001)

   on Nov 13, 2026

   More actions

   Hi, I'd like to work on this issue. Could you please assign it to me? I'm interested in contributing and will work on implementing a solution. Thanks!