Make Laravel Dusk tests more reliable by disabling animations

Published on 27 February 2023

Animations can cause Dusk tests to fail randomly. For example, interacting with an element that is inside a modal might not work if the modal is still playing a slide-in animation.

A nice solution for flaky tests caused by animations is to disable animations while running Dusk tests. Put this in the <head> or your Blade template:

@if(is_running_dusk_tests())
    <style>
        * {
            animation: none !important;
        }
    </style>
@endif

For Dusk specific code I like using a is_running_dusk_tests() helper function. This function lets me quickly find all places where I make an exception when running Dusk.

function is_running_dusk_tests(): bool
{
    return app()->environment('testing-dusk');
}

Make sure to set the correct environment in your .env.dusk file:

APP_ENV="testing-dusk"