karatelabs/karate · warning

screenshotOnFailure: capture failed, continuing

Error message

screenshotOnFailure: capture failed, continuing: {}

What it means

When `screenshotOnFailure` is enabled, Karate attempts a failure screenshot via the driver after a step fails. If any Throwable occurs during capture, it is logged as this warning and the scenario continues; the failure result itself is unaffected.

Solutions

1. Treat as secondary symptom: first diagnose why the step failed and why the driver is unhealthy
2. Check driver/browser logs for a crash or session termination
3. Disable screenshotOnFailure if capture noise obscures the real failure
4. Reconnect/restart the driver infrastructure (grid node, container)

Example fix

// before
configure screenshotOnFailure = true
// after (suppress noisy captures in unstable environments)
configure screenshotOnFailure = karate.env != 'ci-smoke'

// Karate already catches internally; on your side guard any post-failure driver use:
try { var bytes = driver.failureScreenshot(); } catch (t) { karate.log('screenshot skipped', t); }

When it happens

Trigger: A step failed and Karate calls `driver.failureScreenshot()`, which throws (driver crashed, session already dead, WebSocket/CDP connection broken).

Common situations: Browser terminated before the failure screenshot; driver process OOM-killed; remote grid session expired mid-scenario; Driver wrapper in a bad state after a hard failure.

Related errors

• configure driver = } — bypassing driver pool; browser will…
• driver.stop=false — leaving browser running, scenario will…
• Error closing driver
• Error releasing driver to provider
• append() needs at least two arguments

AI-assisted analysis of karatelabs/karate@a22eb90246 (2026-09-12). Data as JSON: /api/errors/09c5fa481cb3cad7. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at karate-core/src/main/java/io/karatelabs/core/ScenarioRuntime.java:2005

     * map first, falling back to the driver instance's frozen options. This
     * lets per-scenario overrides take effect under pooled-driver reuse, where
     * the driver instance's options reflect creation-time config not the
     * current scenario's.
     */
    private void captureScreenshotOnFailure(StepResult sr) {
        if (driver == null || driver.isTerminated()) {
            return;
        }
        try {
            if (!isScreenshotOnFailureEnabled()) {
                return;
            }
            byte[] bytes = driver.failureScreenshot();
            if (bytes != null && bytes.length > 0) {
                sr.addEmbed(new StepResult.Embed(bytes, "image/png", "screenshot.png"));
            }
        } catch (Throwable t) {
            logger.warn("screenshotOnFailure: capture failed, continuing: {}", t.toString());
        }
    }

    @SuppressWarnings("rawtypes")
    private boolean isScreenshotOnFailureEnabled() {
        Object cfg = config.getDriverConfig();
        if (cfg instanceof Map map && map.containsKey("screenshotOnFailure")) {
            Object v = map.get("screenshotOnFailure");
            return v == null || Boolean.parseBoolean(String.valueOf(v));
        }
        try {
            return driver.getOptions().isScreenshotOnFailure();
        } catch (Exception e) {
            return true;
        }
    }

    /**

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