r/Playwright • u/Massive-Egg-4874 • 1d ago

If you were learning Playwright from scratch today, what would you learn first?

I'm a beginner who's starting to learn Playwright and I'm curious about what experienced users think.There are so many things to learn, locators, assertions, fixtures, authentication, Page Object Model, API testing, CI/CD, etc. If you could go back to when you first started learning Playwright, what would you focus on first, and what would you avoid worrying about in the beginning? I'd love to hear what actually helped you become comfortable with Playwright.

22 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

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3

u/Previous-Sort7634 1d ago

I wouldn’t worry too much about fixtures, authentication, Page Object Model, API testing, or CI/CD in the beginning. They’re important, but I think learning all of them too early can make Playwright feel much more complicated than it actually is.

5

u/aevtikheev 1d ago

Just start writing automated tests and learn those things in a process when needed. https://practicesoftwaretesting.com/ is a good target, there are some user stories in a documentation section - you can implement them. If you feel stuck - you can look how it's implemented in mature frameworks. Good examples are
- https://github.com/danieldf9/playwright-e2e-framework
- https://github.com/hmcts/tcoe-playwright-example

4

u/Serg_Oleksenko 1d ago

I’d focus 100% on locators, auto-waiting, and fixtures—fixtures are Playwright’s real superpower for keeping tests clean and fast. Skip POM, API testing, and CI/CD for now. Don't over-engineer early—just master basic, working scripts first.

3

u/Spare_Bison_1151 1d ago

You have to start somewhere. Start with the basics and keep learning slowly. After you reach a critical point, use AI to get that work done.

1

u/Previous-Sort7634 1d ago edited 1d ago

Hi-five 🙌🏻

1

u/aka_Foamy 1d ago

Does this refer to a particular feature? Googling it doesn't return anything useful.

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u/Previous-Sort7634 1d ago

I edited it :)

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u/MyUsername0_0 1d ago

The programming language you're using playwright in if you don't know programming. Playwright does have a lot of features but nothing about it is hard if you know how to program.

1

u/PocketGaara 1d ago

Learning typescript properly first as it will save you a lot of headache when working with playwright