E2e test speed just moved to the protocol layer. cypress 16, out september 1, runs tests over…
e2e test speed just moved to the protocol layer. cypress 16, out september 1, runs tests over http/2 and adds timeouts on chained assertions.
the browser you already trust got faster at the network stack.
Context
Cypress's blog of September 1, 2026 and its changelog entry for 16.0.0, released September 1, 2026, say HTTP/2 is on by default in Chromium-based browsers excluding Electron, with interception moved to the native browser network, while Firefox and WebKit continue to use HTTP/1.1 in this release. The opt-out is forceHttp1: true. The blog reports a benchmark loading 1,000 images in 1,362ms over HTTP/2 against 3,896ms over HTTP/1.1. The changelog says cy.getCookie, cy.getCookies, cy.getAllCookies, cy.getAllLocalStorage and cy.getAllSessionStorage become retry-able query commands that retry chained assertions until they pass or time out under defaultCommandTimeout.
The benchmark figures are vendor-reported on a synthetic page with many requests and are not a suite-level speedup. The retry change applies to those specific commands and is not a general timeout on chained assertions. HTTP/2 applies to Chromium-based browsers only. The release also carries breaking changes, including removal of cy.exec and cy.end, which the note leaves out. A later changelog entry of September 15 fixes a regression in 16.0.0 and does not refute the September 1 claims. The browser you already trust got faster at the network stack is the author's line.
Watch next
- Independent benchmarks on real suites.
Sources
Provenance
The note above is reproduced unedited from the original post, first published on Threads on 22 September 2026 at 07:51 IST. Sources are the papers and datasets the note draws on.
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