Jake Writer
fa8a93577e
After the screencastFrameAck/timestamp fix, recording worked headless but still
produced nothing usable anywhere else: `headless="virtual"` and plain headful
both emitted a valid .webm containing 24 pure-white frames -- Playwright's
filler for a screencast that never delivered a frame.
nsScreencastService only has a working source when the browser is headless
(HeadlessWindowCapturer). Outside headless, CreateWindowCapturer falls through
to libwebrtc's X11 window capturer, which fails three different ways:
* no XComposite -> startVideoRecording() succeeds and then never delivers a
frame. This is Camoufox's own Xvfb configuration, which passes
`-extension COMPOSITE`;
* XComposite enabled -> the browser segfaults during capture (reproduced on
the shipped 152.0.4-beta.28 as well, so it is not specific to this branch);
* Wayland -> nsWindow::GetNativeData(NS_NATIVE_WINDOW_WEBRTC_DEVICE_ID) is
documented as unhandled and returns null, so the service throws
NS_ERROR_FAILURE ("Failed to get native window id") and no capture starts.
Capture from the compositor instead when not headless, via
WindowGlobalParent.drawSnapshot() -- the same call Page.screenshot already
uses, which is why screenshots have always worked in every mode. It renders
page content directly and does not care about the windowing system.
The tick is ack-driven, mirroring nsScreencastService's kMaxFramesInFlight = 1,
so a slow consumer throttles capture rather than queueing JPEGs. Headless keeps
the native C++ capturer, which is cheaper and already correct.
Measured on the packaged Linux build, 3s recording of an animated page, frames
decoded to PNG and inspected rather than trusting file existence:
before after
headless 100 frames, real unchanged, real
headless="virtual" 24 frames, all white 100 frames, real
headful (Xvfb, X11) 24 frames, all white 99 frames, real
headful (Wayland env) no capture at all 99 frames, real
tests/async/test_video.py passes 5/5 both headless and headful. Enabling
Composite no longer crashes either, since X11 window capture is now unused.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Camoufox Python Interface
Lightweight wrapper around the Playwright API to help launch Camoufox.
Note
All the the latest documentation is avaliable here.
What is this?
This Python library wraps around Playwright's API to help automatically generate & inject unique device characteristics (OS, CPU info, navigator, fonts, headers, screen dimensions, viewport size, WebGL, addons, etc.) into Camoufox.
It uses BrowserForge under the hood to generate fingerprints that mimic the statistical distribution of device characteristics in real-world traffic.
In addition, it will also calculate your target geolocation, timezone, and locale to avoid proxy protection (see demo).
Installation
First, install the camoufox package:
pip install -U camoufox[geoip]
The geoip parameter is optional, but heavily recommended if you are using proxies. It will download an extra dataset to determine the user's longitude, latitude, timezone, country, & locale.
Next, download the Camoufox browser:
Windows
camoufox fetch
MacOS & Linux
python3 -m camoufox fetch
To uninstall, run camoufox remove.
Installing multiple Camoufox versions & from other repos
UI Manager
Manage installed browsers, active version, IP geolocation databases, and package info. Basically a Qt front end for the Python CLI tool.
More updates on it will be coming soon.
To use the gui, install Camoufox with the [gui] extra:
pip install 'camoufox[gui]'
To launch:
camoufox gui
CLI Mananger
Demonstration
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/992b1830-6b21-4024-9165-728854df1473
See help message
$ python -m camoufox --help
Usage: python -m camoufox [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...
╭─ Options ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ --help Show this message and exit. │
╰───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
╭─ Commands ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ active Print the current active version │
│ fetch Install the active version, or a specific version │
│ gui Launch the Camoufox Manager GUI (requires PySide6) │
│ list List Camoufox versions │
│ path Print the install directory path │
│ remove Remove downloaded data. By default, this removes everything. │
│ Pass --select to pick a browser version to remove. │
│ server Launch a Playwright server │
│ set Set the active Camoufox version to use & fetch. │
│ By default, this opens an interactive selector for versions and settings. │
│ You can also pass a specifier to activate directly: │
│ Pin version: │
│ camoufox set official/stable/134.0.2-beta.20 │
│ Automatically find latest in a channel source: │
│ camoufox set official/stable │
│ sync Sync available versions from remote repositories │
│ test Open the Playwright inspector │
│ version Display version, package, browser, and storage info │
╰───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
sync
Pull a list of release assets from GitHub.
> camoufox sync
Syncing repositories...
Official... 24 versions
CoryKing... 2 versions
Synced 26 versions from 2 repos.
set
Choose a version channel or pin a specific version. Can also be called with a specifier to activate directly.
Interactive selector:
> camoufox set
You can also pass a specifier to pin a specific version or choose a channel to follow directly. This will pull the latest stable version from the official repo on camoufox fetch.
> camoufox set official/stable # Default setting
Follow latest prerelease version from the official repo, if applicable:
> camoufox set official/prerelease
Pin a specific version:
> camoufox set official/stable/134.0.2-beta.20
active
Prints the current active version string:
> camoufox active # Default channel is active
official/stable
> camoufox set coryking/stable/142.0.1-fork.26
Pinned: coryking/stable/142.0.1-fork.26
Run 'camoufox fetch' to install.
> camoufox active # A specific version is pinned
coryking/stable/142.0.1-fork.26 (not installed)
fetch
Install the latest version from the active channel. By default, this is official/stable. This will also automatically sync repository assets.
> camoufox fetch # Install the latest in the channel
To download the latest from a different channel, or pin a version:
> camoufox set coryking/stable
> camoufox fetch # Will download the latest release from CoryKing's repo for now on
Or pass in the identifier to download directly without activating it:
> camoufox fetch official/stable/135.0-beta.25 # Install a specific version
list
List installed or all available Camoufox versions as a tree.
> camoufox list # show installed versions
> camoufox list all # show all available versions from synced repos
> camoufox list --path # show full install paths
remove
By default, removes the entire camoufox data directory.
> camoufox remove
> camoufox remove -y # skip confirmation prompt
Remove a specific version:
> camoufox remove official/stable/134.0.2-beta.20
Interactively select a version to remove:
> camoufox remove --select
version
Display the Python package version, active browser version, channel, and update status.
> camoufox version
Python Packages
Camoufox v0.5.0
Browserforge v1.2.4
Apify Fingerprints v0.10.0
Playwright v1.57.1.dev0+g732639b35.d20251217
Browser
Active official/stable/135.0.1-beta.24
Current browser v135.0.1-beta.24
Installed Yes
Latest in official/stable? Yes
Last Sync 2026-03-07 00:23
GeoIP
Database MaxMind GeoLite2
Updated 2026-03-07 00:24
Storage
Install path /home/name/.cache/camoufox
Browser(s) directory size 1.2 GB
GeoIP database size 40.7 MB
Config file /home/name/.cache/camoufox/config.json
Repo cache /home/name/.cache/camoufox/repo_cache.json
path
Print the install directory path.
> camoufox path
/home/name/.cache/camoufox
test
Open Camoufox with the Playwright inspector for debugging.
> camoufox test
> camoufox test https://example.com
server
Launch a remote Playwright server.
> camoufox server
Usage
All of the latest stable documentation is avaliable at camoufox.com/python.