Modifiers

Modifiers let you focus on specific tests, skip others, or mark tests as planned but not yet implemented.

.only

Run only the marked tests or suites. All other tests are skipped.

describe.only("focused suite", () => {
  it("this runs", () => {
    expect(true).toBe(true);
  });
});

describe("other suite", () => {
  it("this is skipped", () => { /* ... */ });
});

Works on individual tests too:

describe("math", () => {
  it.only("this runs", () => {
    expect(1 + 1).toBe(2);
  });

  it("this is skipped", () => { /* ... */ });
});

Multiple .only markers can coexist — all marked tests run, everything else is skipped.

Caution

Remember to remove .only before committing. Tests marked with .only will cause other tests to be silently skipped.

.skip

Skip a test or suite entirely. Skipped tests appear in the output but don’t run.

describe.skip("broken feature", () => {
  it("doesn't run", () => { /* ... */ });
});

it.skip("temporarily disabled", () => { /* ... */ });

.todo

Mark a test as planned but not yet implemented. No test function is needed:

it.todo("should validate email format");
it.todo("should handle edge case with empty input");
describe.todo("upcoming feature");

Todo tests appear in the output with a distinct indicator and don’t count as failures.

Per-test timeout

Pass a timeout in milliseconds as the third argument to it() or test() to override the global timeout for a specific test:

it("slow integration call", async () => {
  await fetch("https://example.com/api");
}, 30_000); // 30 second timeout for this test only

The per-test timeout takes precedence over the global timeoutMs config option and the --timeout CLI flag.

CLI output

Each status has a distinct indicator in the CLI output:

Status	Symbol	Color
Pass	✔	Green
Fail	✘	Red
Skip	↷	Yellow
Todo	○	Magenta