Exclude files from test uploads

Learn how to exclude specific files when uploading your tests to BrowserStack

When you running Cypress tests using the run command, the CLI zips the folder where your Cypress configuration file resides (as defined in cypress_config_file).

We only access the uploaded files to run your tests and troubleshoot support tickets, however, you may want to exclude files that your tests do not require. This usually helps if:

• File zipping fails because of unsupported files (we only support test & media files at the moment)
• The test upload fails or takes longer than a couple of minutes
• The Cypress test suite zip is more than 200MB or node modules zip is more than 1GB
• Your test uploads are failing because of network connection issues
• You are zipping unnecessary files like node_modules/*

You can exclude files from test uploads in two ways:

1. Using the exclude key in your configuration file
2. Using the CLI’s --exclude arg

Using browserstack.json

You can use the exclude key in run_settings option to exclude specific files when uploading your tests to BrowserStack.

For example:

{
  ...
  "run_settings": {
    ...
    "exclude": ["some-folder/test.js", "static/*.pdf"]
    ...
  }
  ...
}

Using the CLI

You can use the following args while running the tests using the run command:

For example:

# Exclude just the some-folder/test.js file
browserstack-cypress run --sync --exclude "some-folder/test.js"

# Exclude the abcd folder
browserstack-cypress run --sync --exclude "some-folder/*"

# Exclude every pdf in the some-folder folder
browserstack-cypress run --sync --exclude "some-folder/*.pdf"

# Exclude every pattern
browserstack-cypress run --sync --exclude "some-folder/*.pdf,some-folder/test.js"