Playwright Bot Bypass

Bypass bot detection systems using rebrowser-playwright with stealth techniques. Passes bot.sannysoft.com and enables automation on sites with aggressive bot protection (Cloudflare, Akamai, PerimeterX, etc.).

Why Standard Playwright Gets Detected

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+ with ESM support (.mjs files)
• Google Chrome installed (not just Chromium)
• Headed mode required (headless: false) — no display = no stealth

Verify Chrome is installed:

# macOS
/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome --version
# Windows
"C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --version
# Linux
google-chrome --version

Quick Start

1. Install

npm init -y && npm install rebrowser-playwright

2. Create stealth-test.mjs

import { chromium } from 'rebrowser-playwright';

const browser = await chromium.launch({
  headless: false,
  channel: 'chrome',
  args: ['--disable-blink-features=AutomationControlled', '--no-sandbox']
});

const context = await browser.newContext({
  locale: 'ko-KR',
  extraHTTPHeaders: { 'Accept-Language': 'ko-KR,ko;q=0.9,en-US;q=0.8,en;q=0.7' }
});

await context.addInitScript(() => {
  // Remove webdriver
  delete Object.getPrototypeOf(navigator).webdriver;

  // chrome.runtime
  if (!window.chrome) window.chrome = {};
  if (!window.chrome.runtime) {
    window.chrome.runtime = {
      PlatformOs: { MAC: 'mac', WIN: 'win', ANDROID: 'android', CROS: 'cros', LINUX: 'linux', OPENBSD: 'openbsd' },
      PlatformArch: { ARM: 'arm', X86_32: 'x86-32', X86_64: 'x86-64' }
    };
  }

  // Plugins (Cloudflare checks this)
  Object.defineProperty(navigator, 'plugins', {
    get: () => {
      const arr = [
        { name: 'Chrome PDF Plugin', filename: 'internal-pdf-viewer', description: 'Portable Document Format' },
        { name: 'Chrome PDF Viewer', filename: 'mhjfbmdgcfjbbpaeojofohoefgiehjai', description: '' },
        { name: 'Native Client', filename: 'internal-nacl-plugin', description: '' }
      ];
      arr.__proto__ = PluginArray.prototype;
      return arr;
    }
  });

  // Languages (must match Accept-Language header)
  Object.defineProperty(navigator, 'languages', {
    get: () => ['ko-KR', 'ko', 'en-US', 'en']
  });
});

const page = await context.newPage();

try {
  await page.goto('https://bot.sannysoft.com', { waitUntil: 'networkidle' });
  await page.screenshot({ path: '/tmp/stealth-test.png' });
  console.log('Screenshot saved: /tmp/stealth-test.png');
} finally {
  await browser.close();
}

3. Run

node stealth-test.mjs

Using the Template (Recommended)

The scripts/stealth-template.mjs provides a reusable factory with all patches pre-applied:

import { createStealthBrowser, humanDelay, humanType, simulateMouseMovement } from './scripts/stealth-template.mjs';

const { browser, page } = await createStealthBrowser();

try {
  await page.goto('https://example.com');

  // Human-like mouse movement (avoids Cloudflare Turnstile)
  await simulateMouseMovement(page);

  // Human-like typing instead of instant fill
  await humanType(page, 'input[name="q"]', 'search query');
  await humanDelay(300, 800);
} finally {
  await browser.close();
}

Template Options

const { browser, context, page } = await createStealthBrowser({
  headless: false,             // Required for stealth (default)
  viewport: { width: 1280, height: 800 },  // Default
  locale: 'ko-KR',            // Browser locale (default)
  userAgent: null,             // Custom UA (optional)
  storageState: './session.json',  // Cookie persistence (optional)
  proxy: { server: 'http://proxy:8080' }   // Proxy (optional)
});

// Save session for reuse
import { saveSession } from './scripts/stealth-template.mjs';
await saveSession(context, './session.json');

Stealth Patches Applied

The template applies these patches via addInitScript:

Plus launch args: --disable-blink-features=AutomationControlled, --no-sandbox

Scripts

• scripts/stealth-template.mjs — Reusable stealth browser factory (all examples import this)
• scripts/bot-detection-test.mjs — Verify bypass at bot.sannysoft.com

Examples

• examples/stealth-google-search.mjs — Google search without CAPTCHA
• examples/ab-test.mjs — Side-by-side detected vs stealth comparison
• examples/stealth-twitter-scrape.mjs — Twitter/X profile scraping

Note: ab-test.mjs requires both rebrowser-playwright AND playwright:

npm install rebrowser-playwright playwright && npx playwright install chromium

All screenshots are saved to /tmp/ for predictable paths.

Limitations

• Requires headless: false (headed mode with display)
• Needs real Google Chrome installed (channel: 'chrome')
• Some sites may still detect based on behavior patterns — use humanDelay, humanType, simulateMouseMovement
• Does not bypass CAPTCHAs, only prevents triggering them
• TLS/JA3 fingerprint is handled by channel: 'chrome' (uses real Chrome binary)

Python Support

undetected-chromedriver (Recommended)

pip install undetected-chromedriver

import undetected_chromedriver as uc

# Match your Chrome version: check chrome://version
driver = uc.Chrome()  # auto-detects version

driver.get("https://www.google.com")
search_box = driver.find_element("name", "q")
search_box.send_keys("your search query")
search_box.submit()

Python playwright-stealth only patches at JS level — WebGL still shows SwiftShader. Use undetected-chromedriver instead.

Alternative: Call Node.js from Python

import subprocess
result = subprocess.run(['node', 'stealth-script.mjs', query], capture_output=True)

Troubleshooting