Why Does Headless Mode Cause Problems with Puppeteer?

Why Does Headless Mode Interfere with Puppeteer's Functionality?

Puppeteer, a popular web scraping tool, has been known to experience issues when operating in headless mode. This occurs due to the detection of headless mode by websites that actively combat scraping.

Reasons for Headless Detection

Sites that employ anti-scraping measures can implement techniques to identify headless browsers. These techniques may involve examining User Agents, window geometry, and other factors that differ between human-like browsing and headless automation.

Possible Workarounds

1. Puppeteer-Extra

This library provides plugins that can help bypass headless detection, including:

• puppeteer-extra-plugin-anonymize-ua: Anonymizes the User Agent to conceal the headless mode.
• puppeteer-extra-plugin-stealth: Circumvents common headless mode detection mechanisms.

2. Running a Real Chromium Instance

Instead of using Puppeteer to launch a headless Chromium instance, you can connect Puppeteer to an existing browser UI. To do this:

• Start Chrome or Chromium with the command line flag --remote-debugging-port=9222
• Connect Puppeteer to the running instance using const browser = await puppeteer.connect({ browserURL: ENDPOINT_URL });

Additional Considerations

• Using a real Chromium instance may require server/ops knowledge and additional troubleshooting.
• Other anti-scraping strategies exist, so you may need to explore alternative approaches if headlessness remains an issue.

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