headless
Run without a display.
Use it for: Bulk scraping and tests where nobody watches: lower memory and faster launches. Leave it headful (the default) when a site checks for headless tells, or when you want a recording or live view without extra options.
Browsers: Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Brave, Opera, Naver Whale, Yandex Browser, Chromium, Patchright, Rebrowser, Camoufox, Firefox, WebKit.
Details
Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Brave, Opera, Naver Whale, Yandex Browser, Chromium, Patchright, Rebrowser
- Type:
boolean | "new" | "shell" - Default: false (headful, on a virtual display)
- Example:
{"headless":"new"}
true or "new" runs Chrome's new headless mode; "shell" runs the lightweight headless shell. Anything else — including 1 and "false" — runs headful on a virtual display, which is harder to detect and is billed as 2 threads (headless is 1).
Firefox, WebKit
- Type:
boolean - Default: false (headful, on a virtual display)
- Example:
{"headless":true}
Any truthy value runs headless — including the strings "false" and "0", so send a real boolean. false, 0 or omitting it runs headful on a virtual display (billed as 2 threads; headless is 1).
Camoufox
- Type:
boolean | "virtual" - Default: false (headful, on a virtual display)
- Example:
{"headless":false}
Any truthy value runs headless — including the strings "false" and "0", so send a real boolean. false, "virtual" or omitting it runs headful on a virtual display, which Camoufox recommends for stealth (billed as 2 threads; headless is 1).
Used in
- Case 84: Does the TLS fingerprint (JA4) explain which browsers got in? Twelve browsers against six vendors
- Case 83: Brave's fingerprint randomisation per site, per context and per launch, and what public fingerprint pages make of it
- Case 81: Behaviour scoring: Camoufox humanize on and off vs plain Chrome clicks on a public bot-test form
- Case 77: Kasada and AWS WAF on real sites: twelve browsers, four sites, one exit each
- Case 78: keep_alive: an agent run that survives its client going away
- Case 75: HUMAN on real sites: twelve browsers, three sites, one exit each
- Case 73: Akamai on real sites: twelve browsers, three sites, one exit each
- Case 71: DataDome on real sites: twelve browsers, three sites, one exit each
- Case 70: Cloudflare on real sites: twelve browsers, three sites, one exit each
- Case 68: CAPTCHA demo pages: what reCAPTCHA v3 scores and hCaptcha show seven browsers, and why a demo can't rank them
- Case 66: Which fingerprints stay the same across launches: canvas, WebGL, audio and fonts on seven browsers
- Case 67: Akamai and HUMAN: what gets through? Four browsers, three networks, the vendors' own sites
- Case 65: DataDome: what gets through? Four browsers, three networks, DataDome's own site
- Case 64: Cloudflare: what gets through? Four browsers, three networks, four public test pages
- Case 63: What four public bot-test pages say about five fleet browsers
All options: launch options.