Puppeteer-extra: Stealth only works on newly created pages

[njlr]

I usually fetch the page like this:

const [ page ] = await browser.pages();

But this page will not be appropriately "stealthed" (webdriver is set, IIRC).

Instead you must do:

const page = await browser.newPage();

Ideally the initial page would also be "stealthed"; this was a subtle one that took me a while to find!

[berstend]

Ah, I sometimes forget about that use-case 😄 If possible I'd recommend using new pages, as most pptr tooling works around the new-target-created events.

There's no technical reason for the stealth plugin not to work on existing pages, it's just that it currently only injects stuff when the onPageCreated event is fired. I just recently made a change to the recaptcha plugin to also enumerate potential open pages and inject it's payload there.

Given that we're now live for 2 years with half a million downloads and you're the first to notice I'm gonna assume most people create their pages as opposed to using existing ones 😄

Anyhow, will implement a fix so existing pages get stealthed as well.

[berstend]

I'm thinking about adding a new method to the base plugin: onPage (which behaves like onPageCreated + fired once for each existing page) to save some boilerplate in the plugins.

[shirshak55]

yea I think recommended way is to use

const page = await browser.newPage();

I don't see any reason to use

const [page] = await browser.newPage();

[njlr]

I think using the existing page saves a (very) small amount of RAM.

[shirshak55]

hmm then close that and spawn new tab. I think it is implication of chrome requiring at least one tab open so there is always a first tab?

[berstend]

But yeah, will implement a fix soon :) @njlr sorry for the debug session to figure this out 😄

[berstend]

PS, here's a workaround (untested) until I implemented the fix:

const puppeteer = require("puppeteer-extra")

const StealthPlugin = require("puppeteer-extra-plugin-stealth")
const stealth = StealthPlugin()
puppeteer.use(stealth)

puppeteer.launch({ headless: false }).then(async browser => {
  // Add stealth to existing pages
  const pages = await browser.pages()
  for (const page in pages) {
    await stealth.onPageCreated(page)
  }

  await browser.close()
})

[KrisWu-188]

@berstend If I use "puppeter extra plugin stearth" on the new page, it will be detected. If I don't use it, it won't be detected

[brunogaspar]

@KrisWu-188 Any reproducible example you can share?

[SandratraRM]

If the fix is not going to happen because of lack of people noticing the issue, then +1 because i faced it once too and took a very long time before figuring out what was wrong. You should fix it anyway because people will expect the plugin to work on all pages not just newly created ones.

[berstend]

took a very long time before figuring out what was wrong.

This should be immediately noticeable when turning on debug mode as suggested in the docs.

[berstend]

This is not affecting many people, otherwise there would be more activity or complaints in this issue. Given that there's a relatively clean workaround available and some much more pressing issues (playwright support, ongoing stealth stuff) this has a low priority.

Happy to merge in a documented and tested PR though.

[berstend]

Changing this to a wontfix - the demand for it is very low, a clean workaround available and I'm generally busy with more important things.