Error Messages

Test File Errors

No tests found

This message means that Cypress was unable to find tests in the specified file. You'll likely get this message if you have an empty test file and have not yet written any tests.

No tests found

We found an error preparing your test file

This message means that Cypress encountered an error when compiling and/or bundling your test file. Cypress automatically compiles and bundles your test code so you can use ES2015, CoffeeScript, modules, etc.

You’ll typically receive this message due to:

  • The file not existing
  • A syntax error in the file or one of its dependencies
  • A missing dependency

When the error is fixed in your test file, your tests will automatically re-run.

Support File Errors

Support file missing or invalid

The supportFolder option was removed from Cypress in version 0.18.0 and was replaced by module support and the supportFile configuration option.

Cypress used to automatically include any scripts in the supportFolder before your test files. However, automatically including all the files in a certain directory is somewhat magical and unintuitive, and requires creating globals for the purpose of utility functions.

Use modules for utility functions

Cypress supports both ES2015 modules and CommonJS modules. You can import/require npm modules as well as local modules:

import _ from 'lodash'
import util from './util'

it('uses modules', () => {
  expect(_.kebabCase('FooBar')).to.equal('foo-bar')
  expect(util.secretCode()).to.equal('1-2-3-4')
})

Use supportFile to load scripts before your test code

It's still useful to load a setup file before your test code. If you are setting Cypress defaults or utilizing custom Cypress commands, instead of needing to import/require those defaults/commands in every test file, you can use the supportFile configuration option.

To include code before your test files, set the supportFile path. By default, supportFile is set to look for one of the following files:

  • cypress/support/index.js
  • cypress/support/index.ts
  • cypress/support/index.coffee

Just like with your test files, the supportFile can use ES2015+, TypeScript or CoffeeScript and modules, so you can import/require other files as needed.

Command Errors

Cypress cannot execute commands outside a running test

Cannot execute commands

This message means you tried to execute one or more Cypress commands outside of a currently running test. Cypress has to be able to associate commands to a specific test.

Typically this happens accidentally, like in the following situation.

describe('Some Tests', () => {
  it('is true', () => {
    expect(true).to.be.true // yup, fine
  })

  it('is false', () => {
    expect(false).to.be.false // yup, also fine
  })

  context('some nested tests', () => {
    // oops you forgot to write an it(...) here!
    // these cypress commands below
    // are running outside of a test and cypress
    // throws an error
    cy.get('h1').should('contain', 'todos')
  })
})

Move those Cypress commands into an it(...) block and everything will work correctly.

If you are purposefully writing commands outside of a test, there is probably a better way to accomplish what you're trying to do. Read through the Examples, chat with someone in our chat, or open an issue.

cy...() failed because the element you are chaining off of has become detached or removed from the dom

Getting this error means you've tried to interact with a "dead" DOM element - meaning it's been detached or completely removed from the DOM.

cy.method() failed because element is detached

Cypress errors because it can't interact with "dead" elements - much like a real user could not do this either. Understanding how this happens is very important - and it is often preventable.

Let's take a look at an example below.

Application HTML

<body>
  <div id="parent">
    <button>delete</button>
  </div>
</body>

Application JavaScript

$('button').click(function () {
  // when the <button> is clicked
  // we remove the button from the DOM
  $(this).remove()
})

Test Code causing error

cy.get('button').click().parent()

We've programmed our application above so that as soon as the click event happens, the button is removed from the DOM. When Cypress begins processing the next command (.parent()) in the test above, it detects that the yielded subject (the button) is detached from the DOM and throws the error.

We can prevent Cypress from throwing this error by rewriting our test code.

Fixed Test Code

cy.get('button').click()
cy.get('#parent')

The above example is an oversimplification. Let's look at a more complex example.

In modern JavaScript frameworks, DOM elements are regularly re-rendered - meaning that the old element is thrown away and a new one is put in its place. Because this happens so fast, it may appear as if nothing has visibly changed to the user. But if you are in the middle of executing test commands, it's possible the element you're interacting with has become "dead". To deal with this situation you must:

  • Understand when your application re-renders
  • Re-query for newly added DOM elements
  • Guard Cypress from running commands until a specific condition is met

When we say guard, this usually means:

  • Writing an assertion
  • Waiting on an XHR

More info

Read the blog post Do Not Get Too Detached for another example of this error, and how to solve it.

cy....() failed because the element cannot be interacted with

You may see a variation of this message for 4 different reasons:

  1. The element is not visible
  2. The element is being covered by another element
  3. The element's center is hidden from view
  4. The element is disabled

Cypress runs several calculations to ensure an element can actually be interacted with like a real user would. If you're seeing this error, you may need to guard your commands (due to a timing or an animation issue).

There have been situations where Cypress does not correctly allow you to interact with an element that should be interactable. If that's the case, open an issue.

If you'd like to override these built-in checks, provide the {force: true} option to the action itself. Refer to each command for their available options, additional use cases, and argument usage.

Ignore built-in error checking

cy.get('[disabled]').click({force: true}).

Be careful with this option. It's possible to force your tests to pass when the element is actually not interactable in your application.

cy....() failed because the element is currently animating

cy.method() failed because element is animating

By default Cypress detects if an element you're trying to interact with is animating. This check ensures that an element is not animating too quickly for a real user to interact with the element. This also prevents some edge cases where actions, such as .type() or .click(), happened too fast during a transition.

Cypress will continuously attempt to interact with the element until it eventually times out. If you'd like to force Cypress to interact with the element there are a few options:

  • Pass {force: true}. This disables all error checking
  • Pass {waitForAnimations: false} to disable animation error checking
  • Pass {animationDistanceThreshold: 20} to decrease the sensitivity of detecting if an element is animating. By increasing the threshold this enables your element to move farther on the page without causing Cypress to continuously retry.
cy.get('#modal button').click({ waitForAnimations: false })

You can globally disable animation error checking, or increase the threshold by modifying the Cypress configuration.

Cypress configuration file

const { defineConfig } = require('cypress')

module.exports = defineConfig({
  waitForAnimations: false,
  animationDistanceThreshold: 50
})

import { defineConfig } from 'cypress'

export default defineConfig({
  waitForAnimations: false,
  animationDistanceThreshold: 50
})

{
  "waitForAnimations": false,
  "animationDistanceThreshold": 50
}

The test has finished but Cypress still has commands in its queue

Let's examine several different ways you may get this error message. In every situation, you'll need to change something in your test code to prevent the error.

The test has finished but Cypress still has commands

Short Example

This first test below will pass and shows you that Cypress tries to prevent leaving commands behind in the queue in every test.

Even though we return a string in our test, Cypress automatically figures out that you've queued commands above and does not end the test until all cy commands have finished.

// This test passes!
it('Cypress is smart and this does not fail', () => {
  cy.get('body').children().should('not.contain', 'foo') // <- no return here

  return 'foobarbaz' // <- return here
})

The example below will fail because you've forcibly terminated the test early with mocha's done.

// This test errors!
it('but you can forcibly end the test early which does fail', (done) => {
  cy.get('body')
    .then(() => {
      done() // forcibly end test even though there are commands below
    })
    .children()
    .should('not.contain', 'foo')
})

Complex Async Example

What's happening in this example is that because we have NOT told Mocha this is an asynchronous test, this test will pass immediately then move onto the next test. Then, when the setTimeout callback function runs, new commands will get queued on the wrong test. Cypress will detect this and fail the next test.

describe('a complex example with async code', function () {
  it('you can cause commands to bleed into the next test', function () {
    // This test passes...but...
    setTimeout(() => {
      cy.get('body').children().should('not.contain', 'foo')
    }, 10)
  })

  it('this test will fail due to the previous poorly written test', () => {
    // This test errors!
    cy.wait(10)
  })
})

The correct way to write the above test code is using Mocha's done to signify it is asynchronous.

it('does not cause commands to bleed into the next test', (done) => {
  setTimeout(() => {
    cy.get('body')
      .children()
      .should('not.contain', 'foo')
      .then(() => {
        done()
      })
  }, 10)
})

Complex Promise Example

In the example below, we forget to return the Promise in our test. This means the test passes synchronously but our Promise resolves in the next test. This also causes the commands to be queued on the wrong test. We will get the error in the next test that Cypress detected it had commands in its command queue.

describe('another complex example using a forgotten "return"', () => {
  it('forgets to return a promise', () => {
    // This test passes...but...
    Cypress.Promise.delay(10).then(() => {
      cy.get('body').children().should('not.contain', 'foo')
    })
  })

  it('this test will fail due to the previous poorly written test', () => {
    // This test errors!
    cy.wait(10)
  })
})

The correct way to write the above test code would be to return our Promise:

it('does not forget to return a promise', () => {
  return Cypress.Promise.delay(10).then(() => {
    return cy.get('body').children().should('not.contain', 'foo')
  })
})

cy.visit() failed because you are attempting to visit a second unique domain

See our Web Security documentation.

cy.visit() failed because you are attempting to visit a different origin domain

Two URLs have the same origin if the protocol, port (if specified), and host are the same for both. You can only visit domains that are of the same-origin within a single test. You can read more about same-origin policy in general here.

You can visit urls that are of different origin across different tests, so you may consider splitting your cy.visit() of different origin domains into separate tests.

See our Web Security documentation for more information and workarounds.

Cypress.addParentCommand() / Cypress.addDualCommand() / Cypress.addChildCommand() has been removed and replaced by Cypress.Commands.add()

In version 0.20.0, we removed the commands for adding custom commands and replaced them with, what we believe to be, a simpler interface.

Now you can create parent, dual, and child commands using the same Cypress.Commands.add() command.

Please read our new documentation on writing custom commands.

Cypress detected that you invoked one or more cy commands in a custom command but returned a different value.

Because cy commands are asynchronous and are queued to be run later, it doesn't make sense to return anything else.

For convenience, you can also omit any return value or return undefined and Cypress will not error.

In versions before 0.20.0 of Cypress we automatically detected this and forced the cy commands to be returned. To make things less magical and clearer, we are now throwing an error.

Cypress detected that you invoked one or more cy commands but returned a different value.

Because cy commands are asynchronous and are queued to be run later, it doesn't make sense to return anything else.

For convenience, you can also omit any return value or return undefined and Cypress will not error.

In versions before 0.20.0 of Cypress we automatically detected this and forced the cy commands to be returned. To make things less magical and clearer, we are now throwing an error.

Cypress detected that you returned a promise from a command while also invoking one or more cy commands in that promise.

Because Cypress commands are already promise-like, you don't need to wrap them or return your own promise.

Cypress will resolve your command with whatever the final Cypress command yields.

The reason this is an error instead of a warning is because Cypress internally queues commands serially whereas Promises execute as soon as they are invoked. Attempting to reconcile this would prevent Cypress from ever resolving.

Cypress detected that you returned a promise in a test, but also invoked one or more cy commands inside of that promise.

While this works in practice, it's often indicative of an anti-pattern. You almost never need to return both a promise and also invoke cy commands.

cy commands themselves are already promise like, and you can likely avoid the use of the separate Promise.

Cypress detected that you returned a promise in a test, but also invoked a done callback.

The version of Mocha was upgraded with Cypress 4.0. Mocha 3+ no longer allows returning a promise and invoking a done callback. Read more about it in the 4.0 migration guide.

Passing cy.route({stub: false}) or cy.server({stub: false}) is now deprecated.

You can safely remove: {stub: false}.

CypressError: Timed out retrying: Expected to find element: ‘…’, but never found it. Queried from element: <…>

If you get this error in a case where the element is definitely visible in the DOM, your document might contain malformed HTML. In such cases, document.querySelector() will not find any elements that appear after the point where the HTML is malformed. Even if you feel certain your HTML is not malformed anywhere, check it anyway (line by line in the dev tools). Especially if you've exhausted all other possibilities.

CLI Errors

You passed the --record flag but did not provide us your Record Key.

You may receive this error when trying to run Cypress tests in Continuous Integration. This means that you did not pass a specific record key to: cypress run --record.

Since no record key was passed, Cypress checks for any environment variable with the name CYPRESS_RECORD_KEY. In this case, that was also not found.

You can get your project's record key by locating it in your settings tab in the Cypress App or in the Dashboard Service.

You will want to then add the key to your config file or as an environment variable.

The cypress ci command has been deprecated

As of version 0.19.0 and CLI versions 0.13.0, the cypress ci command has been deprecated. We did this to make it clearer what the difference was between a regular test run and a recorded test run.

Previously to record runs you had the environment variable: CYPRESS_CI_KEY or you wrote:

cypress ci abc-key-123

You need to rewrite this as:

cypress run --record --key abc-key-123

If you were using the environment variable CYPRESS_CI_KEY, rename it toCYPRESS_RECORD_KEY.

You can now run and omit the --key flag:

cypress run --record

We will automatically apply the record key environment variable.

A Cached Cypress Binary Could not be found

This error occurs in CI when using cypress run without a valid Cypress binary cache installed on the system (on linux that's ~/.cache/Cypress).

To fix this error, follow instructions on caching the cypress binary in CI, then bump the version of your CI cache to ensure a clean build.

Incorrect usage of --ci-build-id flag

You passed the --ci-build-id flag but did not provide either a --group or --parallel flag.

The --ci-build-id flag is used to either group or parallelize multiple runs together.

Check out our guide on parallelizing runs and when to use the --ci-build-id option.

The --ci-build-id, --group, or --parallel flags can only be used when recording

You passed the --ci-build-id, --group, or --parallel flag without also passing the --record flag.

These flags can only be used when recording to the Dashboard Service.

Please review our parallelization documentation to learn more.

We could not determine a unique CI build ID

You passed the --group or --parallel flag but we could not automatically determine or generate a ciBuildId.

In order to use either of these parameters a ciBuildId must be determined.

The ciBuildId is automatically detected if you are running Cypress in most CI providers. Please review the natively recognized environment variables for your CI provider.

You can avoid this check in the future by passing an ID to the --ci-build-id flag manually.

Please review our parallelization documentation to learn more.

Group name has already been used for this run

You passed the --group flag, but this group name has already been used for this run.

If you are trying to parallelize this run, then also pass the --parallel flag, else pass a different group name.

Please review grouping test runs documentation to learn more.

Cannot parallelize tests across environments

You passed the --parallel flag, but we do not parallelize tests across different environments.

This machine is sending different environment parameters than the first machine that started this parallel run.

In order to run in parallel mode each machine must send identical environment parameters such as:

  • Specs
  • Operation system name
  • Operating system version
  • Browser name
  • Major browser version

Please review our parallelization documentation to learn more.

Cannot parallelize tests in this group

You passed the --parallel flag, but this run group was originally created without the --parallel flag.

You cannot use the --parallel flag with this group.

Please review our grouping test runs documentation to learn more.

Run must pass --parallel flag

You did not pass the --parallel flag, but this run's group was originally created with the --parallel flag.

You must use the --parallel flag with this group.

Please review our parallelization documentation to learn more.

Cannot parallelize tests on a stale run

This error is thrown when you are attempting to pass the --parallel flag to a run that Cypress detected was completed over 24 hours ago.

In order to uniquely identify each run during cypress run, Cypress attempts to read a unique identifier from your CI provider as described in our parallelization doc.

You may encounter this error if Cypress is detecting the exact same CI Build ID matching a previous CI Build ID in a run that was completed over 24 hours ago. You cannot run tests on a run that has been complete for that long. ​ ​You can see the CI Build ID that is detected for each completed run by looking at the details section at the top of your run in the Dashboard. ​ ​You can generate and pass in your own unique CI Build ID per run as described here.

Please also review our parallelization documentation to learn more.

Run is not accepting any new groups

The run you are attempting access to is already complete and will not accept new groups.

When a run finishes all of its groups, it waits for a configurable set of time before finally completing. You must add more groups during that time period.

Please review our parallelization documentation to learn more.

Page Load Errors

Cypress detected a cross-origin error happened on page load

This error means that your application navigated to a superdomain that Cypress was not bound to. Initially when you cy.visit(), Cypress changes the browser's URL to match the url passed to cy.visit(). This enables Cypress to communicate with your application to bypass all same-origin security policies among other things.

When your application navigates to a superdomain outside of the current origin-policy, Cypress is unable to communicate with it, and thus fails.

There are a few workarounds to these common situations:

  1. Don't click <a> links in your tests that navigate outside of your application. Likely this isn't worth testing anyway. You should ask yourself: What's the point of clicking and going to another app? Likely all you care about is that the href attribute matches what you expect. So make an assertion about that. You can see more strategies on testing anchor links in our "Tab Handling and Links" example recipe.

  2. You are testing a page that uses Single sign-on (SSO). In this case your web server is likely redirecting you between superdomains, so you receive this error message. You can likely get around this redirect problem by using cy.request() to manually handle the session yourself.

If you find yourself stuck and can't work around these issues you can set chromeWebSecurity to false in your Cypress configuration when running in Chrome family browsers (this setting will not work in other browsers). Before doing so you should really understand and read about the reasoning here.

const { defineConfig } = require('cypress')

module.exports = defineConfig({
  chromeWebSecurity: false
})

import { defineConfig } from 'cypress'

export default defineConfig({
  chromeWebSecurity: false
})

{
  "chromeWebSecurity": false
}

Cypress detected that an uncaught error was thrown from a cross-origin script.

Check your Developer Tools Console for the actual error - it should be printed there.

It's possible to enable debugging these scripts by adding the crossorigin attribute and setting a CORS header.

Browser Errors

The browser process running your tests just exited unexpectedly

This error can occur whenever Cypress detects that the launched browser has exited or crashed before the tests could finish running.

This can happen for a number of reasons, including:

  • The browser was exited manually, by clicking the "Quit" button or otherwise
  • Your test suite or application under test is starving the browser of resources, such as running an infinite loop
  • Cypress is running in a memory-starved environment
  • The browser is testing a memory-heavy application
  • Cypress is running within Docker (there is an easy fix for this: see this thread)
  • There are problems with the GPU / GPU drivers
  • There is a bug in the browser involving memory management
  • There is a memory leak in Cypress

If the browser running Cypress tests crashes, currently, Cypress will abort any remaining tests and print out this error.

There is an open issue to recover from browser crashes automatically, so tests can continue to run.

Cypress App errors

Whoops, we can't run your tests

This error happens when Cypress detects that the browser automation is not connected, or that Cypress's internal proxy is being bypassed. This is caused by one of the following:

A policy setting blocks the Cypress proxy server or browser extension

The --proxy-server or --load-extension arguments have been changed

  • When adding a plugin with the Browser Launch API, it's possible for a necessary command-line argument to be changed. If you're running into this error, you can troubleshoot by inspecting args before and after the plugin runs, either by using console.log() or by printing DEBUG logs with DEBUG=cypress:server:plugins,cypress:server:plugins:*.

You visit the Cypress proxy URL outside of a Cypress browser.

  • Don't copy the URL you see when launching a Cypress browser from the Cypress App and open it in a non-Cypress browser. If you want to run your tests in a different browser, follow the instructions in the Cross Browser Testing guide.

Cannot connect to API server

Logging in, viewing runs, and setting up new projects to record requires connecting to an external API server. This error displays when we failed to connect to the API server.

This error likely appeared because:

  1. You do not have internet. Please ensure you have connectivity then try again.
  2. You are a developer that has forked our codebase and do not have access to run our API locally. Please read more about this in our contributing doc.

Cypress detected policy settings on your computer that may cause issues

When Cypress launches Chrome, it attempts to launch it with a custom proxy server and browser extension. Certain group policies (GPOs) on Windows can prevent this from working as intended, which can cause tests to break.

If your administrator has set any of the following Chrome GPOs, it can prevent your tests from running in Chrome:

  • Proxy policies: ProxySettings, ProxyMode, ProxyServerMode, ProxyServer, ProxyPacUrl, ProxyBypassList
  • Extension policies: ExtensionInstallBlacklist, ExtensionInstallWhitelist, ExtensionInstallForcelist, ExtensionInstallSources, ExtensionAllowedTypes, ExtensionAllowInsecureUpdates, ExtensionSettings, UninstallBlacklistedExtensions

Here are some potential workarounds:

  1. Ask your administrator to disable these policies so that you can use Cypress with Chrome.
  2. Use the built-in Electron browser for tests, since it is not affected by these policies. See the guide to launching browsers for more information.
  3. Try using Chromium instead of Google Chrome for your tests, since it may be unaffected by GPO. You can download the latest Chromium build here.
  4. If you have Local Administrator access to your computer, you may be able to delete the registry keys that are affecting Chrome. Here are some instructions:
    1. Open up Registry Editor by pressing WinKey+R and typing regedit.exe
    2. Look in the following locations for the policy settings listed above:
      • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Google\Chrome
      • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Google\Chromium
      • HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Google\Chrome
      • HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Google\Chromium
    3. Delete or rename any policy keys found. Make sure to back up your registry before making any changes.

Uncaught exceptions from your application

When Cypress detects an uncaught exception in your application, it will fail the currently running test.

You can turn off this behavior globally or conditionally with the uncaught:exception event. Please see the Catalog of Events for examples.

On a technical note, Cypress considers uncaught exceptions to be any error that is uncaught by your application, whether they are "standard" errors or unhandled promise rejections. If the error triggers the window's global error handler or its unhandledrejection handler, Cypress will detect it and fail the test.