UI CoveragePremium Solution

Exclude views - viewFilters

The viewFilters configuration excludes URLs from UI Coverage. By default, every URL your tests visit is included. A viewFilters rule with include: false removes matching URLs before any analysis happens: their snapshots don't appear in your report, and no view is created for them. Links are filtered too: any link whose destination URL matches an excluded pattern is removed from the report and the coverage score, and excluded URLs never appear as untested links. The result is a report and score that reflect the parts of your application you own and intend to test.

Why use viewFilters?

• Exclude third-party pages: Your tests may pass through pages you don't control, such as an OAuth provider's login page or a payment processor's checkout. Excluding them keeps external UI out of your report and links to it out of your score.
• Exclude pages you don't intend to test: Remove sections that aren't part of your coverage goals, such as admin-only tools or informational pages, so their untested elements stop diluting your score.
• Remove links to pages of your own that no test visits: Your application may link to pages your tests never navigate to, such as a help center or marketing site. Those links count against your score as untested links even though no view exists for them. Excluding the destination URLs is the way to remove them, since there is no view to exclude.
• Remove links to external websites: Links to entirely different sites, such as social media profiles or a partner's website, count against your score the same way. Exclude their URLs individually, or use an allowlist that includes only your application's URLs and excludes everything else at once.
• Reduce noise: URLs that tests visit incidentally, such as error pages or intermediate redirect URLs, don't represent meaningful user flows. Excluding them keeps reports clean.

If your goal is different, such as organizing URLs into views rather than removing them, or removing individual elements rather than whole pages, see Which option do I need? in the configuration overview.

Scope

info

A root-level viewFilters property applies to both UI Coverage and Cypress Accessibility. To configure UI Coverage separately, nest viewFilters under a uiCoverage key. A nested viewFilters completely replaces the root-level one for UI Coverage; the two lists are not merged.

Syntax

App Quality Config

{
  "viewFilters": [
    {
      "pattern": string,
      "include": boolean,
      "comment": string
    }
  ]
}

To add or edit viewFilters, open the App Quality tab in your project settings in Cypress Cloud. After saving, regenerate a recent run to see the effect of your filters without rerunning your tests. See Setting configuration for details.

Options

Option	Required	Description
pattern	Required	A URL pattern in URL Pattern API syntax, matched against the full URL.
include	Required	Whether matching URLs are included (true) or excluded (false). There is no default; every rule must state it explicitly.
comment	Optional	A note about why this rule exists, for your team's benefit. Comments have no effect on filtering and appear only where the configuration itself is shown: the App Quality configuration editor and a run's Properties tab.

How are viewFilters rules applied?

• Every URL visited during a run, and every link destination found, is compared against your rules in order. The first rule whose pattern matches decides whether that URL is included or excluded, so place specific rules before broad ones.
• URLs that match no rule are included by default. To include only specific URLs, list include: true rules for them followed by a catch-all { "pattern": "*", "include": false } rule.

Pattern matching follows URL Pattern API semantics, with a few behaviors worth knowing:

• A pattern that omits the query string and hash matches URLs with any query string or hash. For example, https://www.my-app.com/admin matches https://www.my-app.com/admin?tab=users.
• Trailing slashes are optional by default: https://www.my-app.com/admin matches both /admin and /admin/. If your pattern ends with a /, only URLs with a trailing slash match it.
• A pattern without a protocol and hostname, such as /admin/*, matches that path on any protocol, hostname, and port. This is useful when tests run against multiple environments.
• A hostname must match exactly unless it contains a wildcard: https://my-app.com/* does not match https://www.my-app.com/home, but https://*.my-app.com/* does.
• The pattern * on its own matches every URL.

Validation rules

Cypress Cloud rejects a configuration when:

• A rule is missing pattern or include.
• A pattern isn't valid URL Pattern syntax.
• Two rules have the same pattern. Duplicates can never both apply, because the first matching rule wins.
• A rule contains a property other than the three listed above.

Examples

Exclude a third-party page

Tests that sign in through an external identity provider capture snapshots of its pages, and your application's links to it count as untested elements. One rule removes both, while every other URL stays included by default.

Config

App Quality Config

{
  "viewFilters": [
    {
      "pattern": "https://app.okta.com/*",
      "include": false,
      "comment": "Exclude the Okta login flow"
    }
  ]
}

Visited URLs

https://app.okta.com/login
https://www.my-app.com/home
https://www.my-app.com/about

Views shown in UI

https://www.my-app.com/home
https://www.my-app.com/about

---

Include only your application's URLs

An allowlist inverts the default. The first rule includes your application, and the catch-all * rule excludes everything else. Rules are applied in order, so the catch-all must come last.

Config

App Quality Config

{
  "viewFilters": [
    {
      "pattern": "https://www.my-app.com/*",
      "include": true
    },
    {
      "pattern": "*",
      "include": false,
      "comment": "Exclude everything that isn't the app itself"
    }
  ]
}

Visited URLs

https://www.my-app.com/dashboards
https://www.my-app.com/dashboards/1
https://www.my-app.com/dashboards/2
https://auth.example.com/login
https://checkout.stripe.com/pay

Views shown in UI

/dashboards
/dashboards/*

The two numbered dashboard URLs group into a single /dashboards/* view through the automatic view creation rules, which apply to included URLs as usual.

---

Exclude error pages in every environment

Patterns without a protocol and hostname match on any environment your tests run against, whether that's localhost, a staging domain, or production.

Config

App Quality Config

{
  "viewFilters": [
    {
      "pattern": "/404",
      "include": false
    },
    {
      "pattern": "/error/*",
      "include": false
    }
  ]
}

Visited URLs

http://localhost:3000/home
http://localhost:3000/404
https://staging.my-app.com/error/500

Views shown in UI

http://localhost:3000/home

---

Exclude URLs from UI Coverage only

Nesting viewFilters under uiCoverage applies the rules to UI Coverage alone. Here, an embedded documentation site is excluded from coverage scores while Cypress Accessibility continues to scan it.

Config

App Quality Config

{
  "uiCoverage": {
    "viewFilters": [
      {
        "pattern": "https://docs.my-app.com/*",
        "include": false,
        "comment": "Don't count docs pages or links to them toward coverage"
      }
    ]
  }
}

A nested viewFilters replaces any root-level viewFilters for UI Coverage, so include every rule the product needs in the nested list.

Troubleshooting

A URL you excluded still appears in the report

• Rules apply in order, and the first match wins. Check whether an earlier rule with include: true matches the URL.
• A pattern that starts with a hostname, like my-app.com/admin, is interpreted as a path rather than a hostname and never matches the URLs you intend. Include the protocol, as in https://my-app.com/admin/*, or use the path-only form /admin/*.
• Hostnames must match exactly. https://my-app.com/* doesn't match URLs on www.my-app.com; add a wildcard such as https://*.my-app.com/* to span subdomains.
• Reports use the configuration saved at the time they were processed. Regenerate the run to apply your current configuration. See Setting configuration.

Error: Missing include boolean

Every rule must set include explicitly; there is no default value. Add "include": false to exclude matching URLs, or "include": true to include them.

Error: No duplicate patterns allowed

Each pattern in viewFilters must be unique. Because the first matching rule wins, a second rule with the same pattern can never apply; remove it or merge the two rules.

See also

• Guide: Ignore views and links walks through finding and excluding irrelevant URLs in an existing report.
• views groups and names URLs instead of removing them.
• elementFilters removes individual elements from reports rather than whole pages.
• Views core concept explains how included URLs become the views your report is organized around.
• Configuration overview covers where configuration lives and how to regenerate reports after changing it.
• UI Coverage FAQ answers common questions about excluding URLs and coverage scores.