Dark mode lands in Maestro flows: switch themes mid-run and check both looks in one flow, one of the most requested authoring features since 2023. `config.yaml` also picks up negation globs, and the rest of the release fixes issues that could block runs on WebView-heavy apps and current Chrome.

## Authoring

- **Test light and dark mode in one flow.** New commands [`setDarkMode`](https://docs.maestro.dev/reference/commands-available/setdarkmode), `toggleDarkMode`, [`assertDarkMode`](https://docs.maestro.dev/reference/commands-available/assertdarkmode), and `assertLightMode` switch the appearance mid-run and check that each state renders correctly, so a single flow covers both themes. Available on iOS, Android and Web.
- **Keep non-flow YAML files next to your flows.** [`config.yaml`](https://docs.maestro.dev/reference/workspace-configuration) now accepts negation patterns: list a file with a leading `!` and Maestro skips it. Non-Maestro YAML can live in the test folder with no restructuring.

## Android WebView inspection

If your app embeds WebViews, this release makes Maestro read them reliably: React, Vue, and Angular content, very deep pages, and modern emulators included.

- **Flows can target React, Vue, and Angular WebView content.** Maestro now reads pages built with modern SPA frameworks, so `tapOn` and `assertVisible` find elements inside those WebViews; previously the frameworks’ internal DOM references could break the capture.
- **Very deep pages capture reliably, and unreadable pages fail fast.** Large, deeply nested DOMs come through whole, and when a page genuinely can’t be read the flow fails with an actionable test error, with no retries spent on something that can’t succeed.
- **One frozen WebView can’t stall the rest of your run.** On Android 16 (API 36), if a single WebView stops responding, Maestro sets that WebView aside and the flow continues.

## Web

- **Web flows run on current Chrome.** On Chrome 151+, commands once again land on the page under test, and a response timeout keeps an unresponsive target from hanging the run.

## Android reliability

- **Assert on Android form validation errors.** Text matchers now read a view’s validation error, so you can check a message like “Email is required” directly.
- **Empty inputs read as empty in the view hierarchy.** A field with no value reports empty `text`, with its placeholder exposed separately as `hintText`, so agents and tools that read the hierarchy can tell a filled input from an empty one.
- **`setDeviceLocale` passes on slower devices.** Maestro waits up to 30 extra seconds for the system to apply the locale.

## CLI

- **A network blip can’t fail your CI step after a successful upload.** `maestro cloud` retries upload-status polls that come back with no response, on the same budget as server errors.

Full changelog: [github.com/mobile-dev-inc/maestro/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md](https://github.com/mobile-dev-inc/maestro/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md#290)

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## Update to 2.9.0

To get everything above, [update your Maestro CLI](https://docs.maestro.dev/maestro-cli/how-to-install-maestro-cli/update-the-maestro-cli). The guide has steps for macOS, Windows, and Homebrew.