Disable video recording on cypress run

[ianwalter]

Current behavior:

Video recorded on every cypress run.

Desired behavior:

CLI and/or config option to disable video recording on cypress run.

How to reproduce:

Run cypress run. See "Started video recording" message and generated video file in cypress/videos.

Additional Info (images, stack traces, etc)

I'm not using the videos while developing and I'd rather save the time/processing and lower my chances of running into associated bugs by disabling this functionality altogether when I need to run all tests.

[MarcLoupias]

You can already disable video recording with proper configuration in your cypress.json file (doc) : "video": false.

You can also do it with CLI by overriding your cypress.json.

Edited by @jennifer-shehane to update key videoRecording to new version 3 key video

[ianwalter]

@MarcLoupias Thanks! Not sure how I missed that.

[0x-r4bbit]

Thanks everyone for this issue as I ran into it as well. However, I do have some thoughts here on usability (but maybe my expectations are wrong):

• I read in the CLI docs that --record specifies "whether to record the test run". With that in mind, I'd expect it to not record the test run with --record is not passed as an option, or, at least let me disable it a la cypress run --record false.

Doing it via config override totally does the trick, it's just less comfortable and to be honest, I didn't run into the overriding docs when searching for such a feature. Frankly I didn't actually search for "overriding config" but rather "how do disable video recording in cypress run".

Again, my expectations may be wrong here. I'm just leaving it here as feedback :)

[brian-mann]

@PascalPrecht There's another issue open that talks about how "recording" and "video recording" is confusing nomenclature.

What it's really saying is two different things. --record is about recording the run details on our Dashboard Service to which you'd have to setup your project to record and explicitly opt in.

By default Cypress takes a video of the run without any flags -- thats the video recording feature. You can turn that off with configuration or CLI flags. --config videoRecording=false

[bahmutov]

The --record is for recording test results on the dashboard. Which is separate from video recording for example. The way I usually set this up (because I don't want to record video locally when testing)

• disable video recording in the cypress.json
• use simple test: cypress run script in the package.json file
• on CI do npm test -- --record and set CYPRESS_RECORD_KEY=<private record key> environment variable and CYPRESS_VIDEO_RECORDING=1 to enable video recording on CI

[bahmutov]

hahaha @brian-mann we posted together!

[brian-mann]

@PascalPrecht here's the other issue for reference #562

[0x-r4bbit]

Thanks for the clarification! This all makes total sense. I assume tho then, that this has potential for improvement. Not sure if I'm the only one who got confused by this.

[johannordin]

videoRecording is now renamed to video (if someone stumbles upon this issue)

[aries1980]

For the “record”, it is still videoRecording in 3.0.1 .

[jennifer-shehane]

Hey @aries1980, what key are you referring to? Where are you using the videoRecording key in 3.0.1?

If you were to use the videoRecording key in your configuration in Cypress version 3.0+, you should see this error:

A configuration option you have supplied has been renamed.

Please rename videoRecording to video

[kud]

It's still videoRecording in the doc: https://docs.cypress.io/guides/core-concepts/screenshots-and-videos.html#Videos

[jennifer-shehane]

I created a new issue in our docs to document the incorrect key reference here: cypress-io/cypress-documentation#1030. Our documentation is open source and contributions are welcome. 😄

[kud]

Thank you. @jennifer-shehane :)

[johnjensenish]

cypress run --config video=false

[KhizerRehan]

@jennifer-shehane, @MarcLoupias is there any possibilty to record video for only failed specs not for passed test cases and used them in report if any test suite fails due to any test case. Thanks. I hope you got my point.

[jennifer-shehane]

@KhizerRehan There is no way to only record video for 'failed' specs because we don't know what will fail or pass until the tests are over and the recording is done. You can delete the videos for passed specs though with this code: https://on.cypress.io/after-spec-api#Delete-the-recorded-video-if-the-spec-passed

[jamesopti]

@KhizerRehan There is no way to only record video for 'failed' specs because we don't know what will fail or pass until the tests are over and the recording is done. You can delete the videos for passed specs though with this code: https://on.cypress.io/after-spec-api#Delete-the-recorded-video-if-the-spec-passed

I believe what others and myself are looking for is a way to opt out of sending anything to the dashboard in the event that all tests pass, as this is what counts against the dashboard usage quotas.

I have absolutely no use case for reviewing passed/successful runs on the dashboard, they just burn through the dashboard allocation/quota.

[rnike]

@jennifer-shehane Is it possible to rerun a test case with video recording on failure? If the test case is successful we can just pass it without recording, if possible this will definite fast up our CI.

[salazarm]

@KhizerRehan There is no way to only record video for 'failed' specs because we don't know what will fail or pass until the tests are over and the recording is done. You can delete the videos for passed specs though with this code: https://on.cypress.io/after-spec-api#Delete-the-recorded-video-if-the-spec-passed

If a test fails, you could run the test again and record it that time.

[hilmanski]

I write a blog post about this https://onebite.dev/disable-video-recording-when-running-cypress/ with other information regarding video recording

TLDR;

import { defineConfig } from 'cypress'

export default defineConfig({
    e2e: {
        setupNodeEvents(on, config) {
            // implement node event listeners here
        },
    },
    video: false,
})

in your cypress setting

[kleinfreund]

I found that cypress run --config video=true doesn’t turn on the video setting if it’s turned off in the config. What does seem to work is using CYPRESS_video=true:

CYPRESS_video=true cypress run