Playwright is a free, open source tool that opens a real browser, clicks through a website like a user, and checks what it sees. In most QA automation training it is the tool you spend the most hours with, so try it for 30 minutes tonight before you pay anyone.
You do not need to know how to code for that first try. You need a laptop, Node.js and one free evening.
What is Playwright, in plain words?
A Playwright test is a short file with two kinds of lines. Some lines do things: open a page, click a button, fill a form. Other lines check things: is this text on the screen, did the page go to the right address.
Here is the smallest real example from the official docs. await page.goto('https://playwright.dev/') opens the page. await expect(page).toHaveTitle(/Playwright/) checks the title. If the title is wrong, the test fails and tells you why.
Two things make Playwright easy for a beginner. First, it waits by itself. Before every click, it checks that the button is really there and ready, so you do not add pauses by hand. Second, every test starts in a fresh browser, so one test cannot break the next one.
Where does Playwright fit in a QA job?
Automation does not replace testing. It repeats checks you already know are worth doing. So the order matters. You first learn what to test, then you teach a tool to repeat it.
Our Software Quality Assurance course at Saarathi Academy in Old Baneshwor, Kathmandu follows that order. Weeks 1 to 3 are manual testing, test design and bug reports. Week 4 adds Postman for APIs and SQL for checking the database. Weeks 5 to 7 cover Playwright with TypeScript, then Selenium, a first Cypress test and GitHub Actions.
We still teach Selenium, because it is the automation tool Nepal job posts name most. A typical post asks for experience with "Selenium, Cypress, TestComplete, or similar". We put Playwright first because its waiting and its trace viewer make a beginner's failures easier to understand. Selenium after it shows you the code many Kathmandu teams already run.
Can my laptop run Playwright?
Check this before anything else, because it is the most common place people get stuck. The Playwright docs list these needs:
- Node.js version 22, 24 or 26.
- Windows 11, or Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Windows 10 is not on the list.
- macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later.
- Ubuntu 22.04, 24.04 or 26.04, or Debian 12 or 13.
If your laptop runs Windows 10, set up WSL first or use another machine. For our course you need your own laptop with at least 8GB RAM, because Playwright runs real browsers next to your code editor.
How to try Playwright in 30 minutes
Make an empty folder and open a terminal inside it. Run npm init playwright@latest. It asks a few questions. Pick TypeScript, keep the tests folder, and say yes to installing browsers.
It creates playwright.config.ts and an example test in tests/example.spec.ts. Run npx playwright test, then npx playwright show-report to see the results page in your browser.
Now record your own test. Run npx playwright codegen demo.playwright.dev/todomvc. A browser opens with the demo to do app. Add two to do items and tick one. Then use the toolbar to add an "assert text" check on the item you ticked. Copy the code the recorder wrote, save it as a new file in tests, and run it with npx playwright test --ui.
Finally, break it on purpose. Change the expected text to something wrong and run npx playwright test --trace on. Open the report and click the trace. You can step through every action and see the page before and after it. Finding out why a test failed is a large part of automation work, and the trace is where you start.
Why a recorded test is not a finished test
The recorder writes your clicks for you. It does not decide what is worth testing. It also cannot tell you whether the check would fail if the feature really broke.
That is the work an employer pays a QA engineer for. A test that passes even when the feature is broken is worse than no test, because the team trusts it. AI tools now write tests too, and the same rule holds. In Week 6 of our course an AI tool writes tests against a real page. Then you read every line, check the locator still finds the right element after the page changes, and delete what checks nothing.
So when you look at any QA automation training, ask one question. Will a person read my tests and tell me which checks are weak? Recording and copying is the easy part.
How do I know I am ready for QA automation training?
You are ready if you finished the steps above and could explain why your broken test failed by reading the trace. You do not need a programming background for our course. JavaScript self study starts in Week 2, 30 minutes a day, before Playwright starts in Week 5.
If the terminal errors stopped you, that is useful to know too. Copy the exact error into a search and fix it. Reading an error message and searching for the answer is part of this job every day.
Try this tonight
Open the Playwright installation guide, run the commands above, and record one test with the test generator. Then break it and open it in the trace viewer.
If you want a mentor to review your tests and take you from manual testing to Playwright in CI, the Software Quality Assurance course has the details, and the full week by week plan is in the public syllabus. We also wrote about why QA automation training changes what a tester can do.
Top comments (0)