Nightwatch Configuration File

Overview

The Nightwatch test runner binary expects a configuration file located in the current working directory. The following is a list of possible file names that are loaded by default, if found:

  • nightwatch.conf.js
  • nightwatch.conf.cjs (when using ES Modules)
  • nightwatch.conf.ts (when using TypeScript)
  • nightwatch.json

You can always specify a config file location via the --config CLI argument. Read more about CLI options on the Reference > Nightwatch CLI page.

From Nightwatch 2, you can also specify the config file to return a Promise and the result will be await-ed.

Example

Here's an example config file which uses Firefox as target browser and assumes that the geckodriver NPM package is installed.

nightwatch.conf.js 
module.exports = {
  // An array of folders (excluding subfolders) where your tests are located;
  // if this is not specified, the test source must be passed as the second argument to the test runner.
  src_folders: [],
  

  webdriver: {
    start_process: true,
    port: 4444,
    server_path: require('geckodriver').path,
    cli_args: [
      // very verbose geckodriver logs
      // '-vv'
    ]
  },
  

  test_settings: {
    default: {
      launch_url: 'https://nightwatchjs.org',
      desiredCapabilities : {
        browserName : 'firefox'
      }
    }
  }
};

Auto-generated Configuration

Since version 1.3, Nightwatch will generate a nightwatch.conf.js config file on the first run or if no other config file has been found, based on the operation system and existing driver packages. If a nightwatch.json or nightwatch.conf.js file is found in the current folder, nothing happens and the file is not generated.

Feel free to edit this file and adapt the settings however you see fit. So far, we have included support for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer.

The following packages can be used from NPM and, if installed, Nightwatch will automatically detect and configure the test runner:

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