How to Disable JavaScript in Playwright Tests

To understand how your webpages perform without JavaScript, it's essential to conduct tests under conditions where JavaScript is intentionally disabled.

This approach can reveal how your site appears to users with JavaScript turned off, such as those using screen readers, browsers with strict security settings, or experiencing slow internet connections.

Testing without JavaScript can help ensure your website is accessible and provides a baseline level of functionality for all users, highlighting areas where progressive enhancement techniques can be applied to improve the user experience without relying solely on JavaScript.

Since JavaScript is enabled by default in all browsers, you ought to disable it before running such tests. Here's how to do it:

import { test, expect } from '@playwright/test';

test.describe('disabling javascript', () => {
  test.use({ javaScriptEnabled: false });

  test('...', async ({ page }) => {
    // JavaScript will be disabled in this test
  });
});

You can also disable JavaScript for the entire test suite in your playwright.config.js file as follows:

import { defineConfig } from '@playwright/test';

export default defineConfig({
  use: {
    javaScriptEnabled: false,
  },
});

Thanks for reading, and happy coding!

Got an article suggestion? Let us know

Explore more

The Top 10 Playwright Alternatives in 2025

Playwright is a powerful, open-source, front-end monitoring tool, but it's not right for everyone. Check out these Playwright alternatives.

Comparisons

9 Playwright Best Practices

Explore 9 essential Playwright best practices to enhance the reliability, efficiency, and effectiveness of your end-to-end tests

Guides

End-to-End Testing with Playwright

Learn to learn to develop and execute Playwright test scripts, utilize its time travel debugging capabilities, and proactively identify visual regressions in this hands-on guide

Guides

Playwright Testing Essentials

Explore the basics of Playwright in this guide covering its key features and setup, with examples demonstrating end-to-end web app testing

Guides

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.