Managing Environments
Once environments exist, the Environments panel on Settings → Environments is where you find them, change where they are offered, switch them off, and delete them — one at a time or in bulk.
The list
Rows are newest first. There is no sort control. Each row has three columns:
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Environment | The generated name, with the combination it was built from spelled out underneath — each group and the platform it contributed, e.g. Browsers → Chrome, Operating systems → Windows 11. |
| Projects | All, a count, or None. None carries a warning reason: “Assigned to no project, so no run can be recorded against it.” |
| Status | Enabled, or Disabled with its reason: “Not offered when starting a run. Existing results keep it.” |
Before any environment exists the panel explains what one is and links to this documentation: “No environments yet. An environment is one combination of platforms — Chrome on Windows 11 — that a run can be recorded against.”, with a What an environment is for link and a Build environments button.
Search and filter
Search environments filters by name as you type. Beside it, the Status control filters to All, Enabled or Disabled, each showing its live count. When a search or filter matches nothing the panel says which one is responsible — “No environments match ‘zzz’ — Try a different search or status.” — and offers Clear filters.
Enabling and disabling
There is no toggle on the row. Open the row’s … menu and choose Disable environment or Enable environment — the label matches the current state. The change is immediate and reversible.
Disabling takes an environment out of circulation without losing anything. A disabled environment is not offered when someone starts a new run — verified live: with the workspace’s only environment enabled, the run composer’s environment picker offered it; disabled, the same picker offered No environment and nothing else. Runs that were already recorded against it keep it, and keep every result.
One display quirk is worth knowing: while an environment is disabled, a run already recorded against it still shows it as a chip at the top of the run, but the Environment row in the run’s About rail reads No environment, because that control lists only environments currently on offer. Re-enable the environment and the rail shows it again. Nothing about the run changes in between.
Editing an environment
Edit environment… opens a dialog titled Edit <name>, summarised as “Where this environment is offered, and whether it is offered at all.” Two things are editable.
- Enabled — “Offered when starting a run. Disabling keeps every recorded result.”
- Available in — “Which projects can record runs against this environment.” Either All projects, or Selected projects, which lists the projects currently chosen with a count (Projects (2)) and the note “Only these projects offer it.” Switching to Selected projects keeps the selection an environment already had.
The name and the platform combination are not editable, and the dialog says why: “Generated from the platform combination and cannot be changed, so test run reports accurately reflect what was tested. To test a different combination, create another environment.” The combination is shown underneath as a fact — each group and the platform it contributed.
Deleting an environment
Deleting is permanent, and it reaches into runs. The environment is removed from every run that was recorded against it — those runs keep their results and their progress, but lose the environment. There is no undo and no restore; a re-created environment is a new record.
The confirmation is the same sentence either way — “It is removed from every run that offered it. Runs already recorded keep their result history.”, followed by “This cannot be undone. Disabling instead keeps the record and stops it being offered on new runs.” — but what it asks of you depends on the environment:
| The environment | What the dialog demands |
|---|---|
| Enabled | Type DELETE to confirm, plus a Disable instead button beside Cancel |
| Already disabled | A plain confirm — nothing to type, and no Disable instead, because it is already off |
Deleting several at once
- Tick the rows you want. The header checkbox selects every row currently listed — so search or filter first if you want to narrow it.
- A bar appears above the table with the count (“3 environments”), a Delete… button and Clear.
- Confirm. The dialog is titled Delete 3 environments? and shows two counts — how many will be deleted, and how many of those are still enabled — above the warning “This cannot be undone — a re-created environment is a new record, so nothing that referenced these comes back.”
Bulk delete is limited to 100 environments at a time; for more, repeat the operation.
The bulk confirmation does not ask you to type anything, even when every environment in the selection is enabled, and it does not offer Disable instead. Read the two counts before you confirm — deleting three enabled environments takes one click more than deleting one does.
When someone else changed it first
If the thing you are acting on was deleted while your dialog was open, the change is not applied and the dialog says so instead of failing quietly: “<name> no longer exists — Someone else deleted this environment before your change was saved. Nothing was applied.”, with Close and Refresh list. Refresh list reloads the page’s data so you are looking at what is actually there.