Rainer Hahnekamp - Testronaut: The Evolution of Component Testing | NG Belgrade Conf 2026

The change of guard in Angular testing happened swiftly. With Vitest, we didn't just get a modern runner, we got Full Browser Mode. This feature brought "auto-waiting" to the table. Say goodbye to detectChanges() or whenStable(). But is Vitest the final destination, or just a bridge? Currently, Vitest achieves its browser capabilities by wrapping Playwright. But why do we need that additional layer of abstraction? Testronaut takes us to the next stage: native Playwright Component Testing. This talk demonstrates the advantages of using Playwright directly for component tests. We will see how removing the proxy unlocks the full ecosystem, including the native VSCode extension, the complete Playwright API, and more.