Browser Settings

Browser Use uses playwright (or patchright) to manage its connection with a real browser.

To launch or connect to a browser, pass any playwright / browser-use configuration arguments you want to BrowserSession(...):

from browser_use import BrowserSession, Agent

browser_session = BrowserSession(
    headless=True,
    viewport={'width': 964, 'height': 647},
    user_data_dir='~/.config/browseruse/profiles/default',
)
agent = Agent('fill out the form on this page', browser_session=browser_session)

​

BrowserSession

• BrowserSession(**params) is Browser Use’s object that tracks a connection to a running browser. It sets up:
  • the playwright, browser, browser_context, and page objects and tracks which tabs the agent/human are focused on
  • methods to interact with the browser window, apply config needed by the Agent, and run the DOMService for element detection
  • it can take a browser_profile=BrowserProfile(...) template containing some config defaults, and **kwargs session-specific config overrides

​

Browser Connection Parameters

Provide any one of these options to connect to an existing browser. These options are session-specific and cannot be stored in a BrowserProfile(...) template.

​

wss_url

wss_url: str | None = None

WSS URL of the playwright-protocol browser server to connect to. See here for WSS connection instructions.

​

cdp_url

cdp_url: str | None = None

CDP URL of the browser to connect to (e.g. http://localhost:9222). See here for CDP connection instructions.

​

browser_pid

browser_pid: int | None = None

PID of a running chromium-based browser process to connect to on localhost. See here for connection via pid instructions.

​

Session-Specific Parameters

​

browser_profile

browser_profile: BrowserProfile = BrowserProfile()

Optional BrowserProfile template containing default config to use for the BrowserSession. (see below for more info)

​

playwright

playwright: Playwright | None = None

Optional playwright or patchright API client handle to use, the result of (await async_playwright().start()) or (await async_patchright().start()), which spawns a node.js child subprocess that relays commands to the browser over CDP.

See here for more detailed usage instructions.

​

browser

browser: Browser | None = None

Playwright Browser object to use (optional). See here for more detailed usage instructions.

​

browser_context

browser_context: BrowserContext | None = None

Playwright BrowserContext object to use (optional). See here for more detailed usage instructions.

​

page aka agent_current_page

page: Page | None = None

Foreground Page that the agent is focused on, can also be passed as page=... as a shortcut. See here for more detailed usage instructions.

​

human_current_page

human_current_page: Page | None = None

Foreground Page that the human is focused on to start, not necessary to set manually.

​

initialized

initialized: bool = False

Mark BrowserSession as already initialized, skips launch/connection (not recommended)

​

**kwargs

BrowserSession can also accept all of the parameters below. (the parameters above this point are specific to BrowserSession and cannot be stored in a BrowserProfile template)

Extra **kwargs passed to BrowserSession(...) act as session-specific overrides to the BrowserProfile(...) template.

base_iphone13 = BrowserProfile(
    storage_state='/tmp/auth.json',     # share cookies between parallel browsers
    **playwright.devices['iPhone 13'],
    timezone_id='UTC',
)
usa_phone = BrowserSession(
    browser_profile=base_iphone13,
    timezone_id='America/New_York',     # kwargs override values in base_iphone13
)
eu_phone = BrowserSession(
    browser_profile=base_iphone13,
    timezone_id='Europe/Paris',
)

usa_agent = Agent(task='show me todays schedule...', browser_session=usa_phone)
eu_agent = Agent(task='show me todays schedule...', browser_session=eu_phone)
await asyncio.gather(agent1.run(), agent2.run())

​

BrowserProfile

A BrowserProfile is a 📋 config template for a 🎭 BrowserSession(...).

It’s basically just a typed + validated version of a dict to hold config.

When you find yourself storing or re-using many browser configs, you can upgrade from:

- config = {key: val, key: val, ...}
- BrowserSession(**config)

To this instead:

+ config = BrowserProfile(key=val, key=val, ...)
+ BrowserSession(browser_profile=config)

session = BrowserSession(headless=True, storage_state='auth.json', viewport={...}, ...)

BrowserProfile is optional, but it provides a number of benefits over a normal dict for holding config:

• has type hints and pydantic field descriptions that show up in your IDE
• validates config at runtime quickly without having to start a browser
• provides helper methods to autodetect screen size, set up local paths, save/load config as json, and more…

BrowserProfile and BrowserSession can both take any of the:

• Playwright parameters
• Browser-Use parameters (extra options we provide on top of playwright)

The only parameters BrowserProfile can NOT take are the session-specific connection parameters and live playwright objects:
cdp_url, wss_url, browser_pid, page, browser, browser_context, playwright, etc.

​

Basic Example

from browser_use.browser import BrowserProfile

profile = BrowserProfile(
    stealth=True,
    storage_state='/tmp/google_docs_cookies.json',
    allowed_domains=['docs.google.com', 'https://accounts.google.com'],
    viewport={'width': 396, 'height': 774},
    # ... playwright args / browser-use config args ...
)

phone1 = BrowserSession(browser_profile=profile, device_scale_factor=1)
phone2 = BrowserSession(browser_profile=profile, device_scale_factor=2)
phone3 = BrowserSession(browser_profile=profile, device_scale_factor=3)

​

Browser-Use Parameters

These parameters control Browser Use-specific features, and are outside the standard playwright set. They can be passed to BrowserSession(...) and/or stored in a BrowserProfile template.

​

keep_alive

keep_alive: bool | None = None

If True it wont close the browser after the first agent.run() ends. Useful for running multiple tasks with the same browser instance. If this is left as None and the Agent launched its own browser, the default is to close the browser after the agent completes. If the agent connected to an existing browser then it will leave it open.

​

stealth

stealth: bool = False

Set to True to use patchright to avoid bot-blocking. (Might cause issues with some sites, requires manual testing.)

​

allowed_domains

allowed_domains: list[str] | None = None

List of allowed domains for navigation. If None, all domains are allowed. Example: ['google.com', '*.wikipedia.org'] - Here the agent will only be able to access google.com exactly and wikipedia.org + *.wikipedia.org.

Glob patterns are supported:

• ['example.com'] ✅ will match only https://example.com/* exactly, subdomains will not be allowed. It’s always the most secure to list all the domains you want to give the access to explicitly w/ schemes e.g. ['https://google.com', 'http*://www.google.com', 'https://myaccount.google.com', 'https://mail.google.com', 'https://docs.google.com']
• ['*.example.com'] ⚠️ CAUTION this will match https://example.com and all its subdomains. Make sure all the subdomains are safe for the agent! abc.example.com, def.example.com, …, useruploads.example.com, admin.example.com

​

disable_security

disable_security: bool = False

This option is for debugging and interacting across cross-origin iFrames when there are no cookies or sensitive data in use. It’s very INSECURE, under no circumstances should you enable this while using real cookies or sensitive data, visiting a single untrusted URL in this mode can immediately compromise all the profile cookies instantly. Consider a less nuclear option like bypass_csp=True instead.

​

deterministic_rendering

deterministic_rendering: bool = False

It’s a shortcut for adding these launch args:

• --deterministic-mode
• --js-flags=--random-seed=1157259159
• --force-color-profile=srgb
• --font-render-hinting=none
• --force-device-scale-factor=2
• --enable-webgl

With these options fonts will look slightly worse than macOS and slightly than Windows, but rendering will be more consistent between OSs and runs. The cost is performance and stability. Software rendering is slower, easier to fingerprint as a bot, and sometimes glitchy. You likely don’t need this option unless you’re trying to do screenshot diffing.

​

highlight_elements

highlight_elements: bool = True

Highlight interactive elements on the screen with colorful bounding boxes.

​

viewport_expansion

viewport_expansion: int = 500

Viewport expansion in pixels. With this you can control how much of the page is included in the context of the LLM:

• -1: All elements from the entire page will be included, regardless of visibility (highest token usage but most complete).
• 0: Only elements which are currently visible in the viewport will be included.
• 500 (default): Elements in the viewport plus an additional 500 pixels in each direction will be included, providing a balance between context and token usage.

​

include_dynamic_attributes

include_dynamic_attributes: bool = True

Include dynamic attributes in selectors for better element targeting.

​

minimum_wait_page_load_time

minimum_wait_page_load_time: float = 0.25

Minimum time to wait before capturing page state for LLM input.

​

wait_for_network_idle_page_load_time

wait_for_network_idle_page_load_time: float = 0.5

Time to wait for network activity to cease. Increase to 3-5s for slower websites. This tracks essential content loading, not dynamic elements like videos.

​

maximum_wait_page_load_time

maximum_wait_page_load_time: float = 5.0

Maximum time to wait for page load before proceeding.

​

wait_between_actions

wait_between_actions: float = 0.5

Time to wait between agent actions.

​

cookies_file

cookies_file: str | None = None

JSON file path to save cookies to.

​

profile_directory

profile_directory: str = 'Default'

Chrome profile subdirectory name inside of your user_data_dir (e.g. Default, Profile 1, Work, etc.). No need to set this unless you have multiple profiles set up in a single user_data_dir and need to use a specific one.

​

window_position

window_position: dict | None = {"width": 0, "height": 0}

Window position from top-left corner.

​

save_recording_path

save_recording_path: str | None = None

Directory path for saving video recordings.

​

trace_path

trace_path: str | None = None

Directory path for saving Agent trace files. Files are automatically named as {trace_path}/{context_id}.zip.

​

Playwright Launch Options

All the parameters below are standard playwright parameters and can be passed to both BrowserSession and BrowserProfile. They are defined in browser_use/browser/profile.py. See here for the official Playwright documentation for all of these options.

​

headless

headless: bool | None = None

Runs the browser without a visible UI. If None, auto-detects based on display availability. If you set headless=False on a server with no monitor attached, the browser will fail to launch (use xvfb + vnc to give a headless server a virtual display you can remote control).

headless=False is recommended for maximum stealth and is required for human-in-the-loop workflows.

​

channel

channel: BrowserChannel = 'chromium'

Browser channel: ['chromium'] (default when stealth=False), 'chrome' (default when stealth=True), 'chrome-beta', 'chrome-dev', 'chrome-canary', 'msedge', 'msedge-beta', 'msedge-dev', 'msedge-canary'

Don’t worry, other chromium-based browsers not in this list (e.g. brave) are still supported if you provide your own executable_path, just set it to chromium for those.

​

executable_path

executable_path: str | Path | None = None

Path to browser executable for custom installations.

​

user_data_dir

user_data_dir: str | Path | None = '~/.config/browseruse/profiles/default'

Directory for browser profile data. Set to None to use an ephemeral temporary profile (aka incognito mode).

Multiple running browsers cannot share a single user_data_dir at the same time. You must set it to None or provide a unique user_data_dir per-session if you plan to run multiple browsers.

The browser version run must always be equal to or greater than the version used to create the user_data_dir. If you see errors like Failed to parse Extensions or similar and failures when launching, you’re attempting to run an older browser with an incompatible user_data_dir that’s already been migrated to a newer schema version.

​

args

args: list[str] = []

Additional command-line arguments to pass to the browser. See here for the full list of available chrome launch options.

​

ignore_default_args

ignore_default_args: list[str] | bool = ['--enable-automation', '--disable-extensions']

List of default CLI args to stop playwright from including when launching chrome. Set it to True to disable all default options (not recommended).

​

env

env: dict[str, str] = {}

Extra environment variables to set when launching browser. e.g. {'DISPLAY': '1'} to use a specific X11 display.

​

chromium_sandbox

chromium_sandbox: bool = not IN_DOCKER

Whether to enable Chromium sandboxing (recommended for security). Should always be False when running inside Docker because Docker provides its own sandboxing can conflict with Chrome’s.

​

devtools

devtools: bool = False

Whether to open DevTools panel automatically (only works when headless=False).

​

slow_mo

slow_mo: float = 0

Slow down actions by this many milliseconds.

​

timeout

timeout: float = 30000

Default timeout in milliseconds for connecting to a remote browser.

​

accept_downloads

accept_downloads: bool = True

Whether to automatically accept all downloads.

​

proxy

proxy: dict | None = None

Proxy settings. Example: {"server": "http://proxy.com:8080", "username": "user", "password": "pass"}.

​

permissions

permissions: list[str] = ['clipboard-read', 'clipboard-write', 'notifications']

Browser permissions to grant. See here for the full list of available permission.

​

storage_state

storage_state: str | Path | dict | None = None

Browser storage state (cookies, localStorage). Can be file path or dict. See here for the Playwright storage_state documentation on how to use it. This option is only applied when launching a new browser using the default builtin playwright chromium and user_data_dir=None is set.

# to create a storage state file, run the following and log into the sites you need once the browser opens:
playwright open https://example.com/ --save-storage=./storage_state.json
# then setup a BrowserSession with storage_state='./storage_state.json' and user_data_dir=None to use it

​

Playwright Timing Settings

These control how the browser waits for CDP API calls to complete and pages to load.

​

default_timeout

default_timeout: float | None = None

Default timeout for Playwright operations in milliseconds (e.g. 10000 if you want 10s).

​

default_navigation_timeout

default_navigation_timeout: float | None = None

Default timeout for page navigation in milliseconds (e.g. 30000 if you want 30s).

​

Playwright Viewport Options

Configure browser window size, viewport, and display properties:

​

user_agent

user_agent: str | None = None

Specific user agent to use in this context. See playwright.devices.

​

is_mobile

is_mobile: bool = False

Whether the meta viewport tag is taken into account and touch events are enabled.

​

has_touch

has_touch: bool = False

Specifies if viewport supports touch events.

​

geolocation

geolocation: dict | None = None

Geolocation coordinates. Example: {"latitude": 59.95, "longitude": 30.31667}

​

locale

locale: str | None = None

Specify user locale, for example en-GB, de-DE, etc. Locale will affect the navigator.language value, Accept-Language request header value as well as number and date formatting rules.

​

timezone_id

timezone_id: str | None = None

Timezone identifier (e.g. 'America/New_York' or 'UTC').

​

window_size

window_size: dict | None = None

Browser window size for headful mode. Example: {"width": 1920, "height": 1080}

​

viewport

viewport: dict | None = None

Viewport size with width and height. Example: {"width": 1280, "height": 720}

​

no_viewport

no_viewport: bool | None = not headless

Disable fixed viewport. Content will resize with window.

Tip: don’t use this parameter, it’s a playwright standard parameter but it’s redundant and only serves to override the viewport setting above. A viewport is always used in headless mode regardless of this setting, and is never used in headful mode unless you pass viewport={width, height} explicitly.

​

device_scale_factor

device_scale_factor: float | None = None

Device scale factor (DPI). Useful for high-resolution screenshots (set it to 2 or 3).

​

screen

screen: dict | None = None

Screen size available to browser. Auto-detected if not specified.

​

color_scheme

color_scheme: ColorScheme = 'light'

Preferred color scheme: 'light', 'dark', 'no-preference'

​

contrast

contrast: Contrast = 'no-preference'

Contrast preference: 'no-preference', 'more', 'null'

​

reduced_motion

reduced_motion: ReducedMotion = 'no-preference'

Reduced motion preference: 'reduce', 'no-preference', 'null'

​

forced_colors

forced_colors: ForcedColors = 'none'

Forced colors mode: 'active', 'none', 'null'

​

**playwright.devices[...]

Playwright provides launch & context arg presets to emulate common device fingerprints.

BrowserProfile(
    ...
    **playwright.devices['iPhone 13'],    # playwright = await async_playwright().start()
)

Because BrowserSession and BrowserProfile take all the standard playwright args, we are able to support these device presets as well.

​

Playwright Security Options

See allowed_domains above too!

​

offline

offline: bool = False

Emulate network being offline.

​

http_credentials

http_credentials: dict | None = None

Credentials for HTTP authentication.

​

extra_http_headers

extra_http_headers: dict[str, str] = {}

Additional HTTP headers to be sent with every request.

​

ignore_https_errors

ignore_https_errors: bool = False

Whether to ignore HTTPS errors when sending network requests.

​

bypass_csp

bypass_csp: bool = False

Toggles bypassing Content-Security-Policy. Enabling reduces some CSP-related errors that can arise from automation scripts injected into pages with strict policies that forbid inline scripts.

​

java_script_enabled

java_script_enabled: bool = True

Whether or not to enable JavaScript in the context.

​

service_workers

service_workers: ServiceWorkers = 'allow'

Whether to allow sites to register Service workers: 'allow', 'block'

​

base_url

base_url: str | None = None

Base URL to be used in page.goto() and similar operations.

​

strict_selectors

strict_selectors: bool = False

If true, selector passed to Playwright methods will throw if more than one element matches.

​

client_certificates

client_certificates: list[ClientCertificate] = []

Client certificates to be used with requests.

​

Playwright Recording Options

Note: Browser Use also provides some of our own recording-related options not listed below (see above).

​

record_video_dir

record_video_dir: str | Path | None = None

Directory to save .webm video recordings. Playwright Docs: record_video_dir

​

record_video_size

record_video_size: dict | None = None. [Playwright Docs: `record_video_size`](https://playwright.dev/python/docs/api/class-browsertype#browser-type-launch-persistent-context-option-record-video-size)

Video size. Example: {"width": 1280, "height": 720}

​

record_har_path

record_har_path: str | Path | None = None

Path to save .har network trace files. Playwright Docs: record_har_path

​

record_har_content

record_har_content: RecordHarContent = 'embed'

How to persist HAR content: 'omit', 'embed', 'attach'

​

record_har_mode

record_har_mode: RecordHarMode = 'full'

HAR recording mode: 'full', 'minimal'

​

record_har_omit_content

record_har_omit_content: bool = False

Whether to omit request content from the HAR.

​

record_har_url_filter

record_har_url_filter: str | Pattern | None = None

URL filter for HAR recording.

​

downloads_path

downloads_path: str | Path | None = '~/.config/browseruse/downloads'

(aliases: downloads_dir, save_downloads_path)

Local filesystem directory to save browser file downloads to.

​

traces_dir

traces_dir: str | Path | None = None

Directory to save all-in-one trace files. Files are automatically named as {traces_dir}/{context_id}.zip. Playwright Docs: traces_dir

​

handle_sighup

handle_sighup: bool = True

Whether playwright should swallow SIGHUP signals and kill the browser.

​

handle_sigint

handle_sigint: bool = False

Whether playwright should swallow SIGINT signals and kill the browser.

​

handle_sigterm

handle_sigterm: bool = False

Whether playwright should swallow SIGTERM signals and kill the browser.

​

Full Example

from browser_use import BrowserSession, BrowserProfile, Agent

browser_profile = BrowserProfile(
    headless=False,
    storage_state="path/to/storage_state.json",
    wait_for_network_idle_page_load_time=3.0,
    viewport={"width": 1280, "height": 1100},
    locale='en-US',
    user_agent='Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/85.0.4183.102 Safari/537.36',
    highlight_elements=True,
    viewport_expansion=500,
    allowed_domains=['*.google.com', 'http*://*.wikipedia.org'],
    user_data_dir=None,
)

browser_session = BrowserSession(
    browser_profile=browser_profile,
    headless=True,                          # extra kwargs to the session override the defaults in the profile
)

# you can drive a session without the agent / reuse it between agents
await browser_session.start()
page = await browser_session.get_current_page()
await page.goto('https://example.com/first/page')

async def run_search():
    agent = Agent(
        task='Your task',
        llm=llm,
        page=page,                        # optional: pass a specific playwright page to start on
        browser_session=browser_session,  # optional: pass an existing browser session to an agent
    )

​

Summary

• BrowserSession (defined in browser_use/browser/session.py) handles the live browser connection and runtime state
• BrowserProfile (defined in browser_use/browser/profile.py) is a template that can store default config parameters for a BrowserSession(...)

Configuration parameters defined in both scopes consumed by these calls depending on whether we’re connecting/launching:

• BrowserConnectArgs - args for playwright.BrowserType.connect_over_cdp(...)
• BrowserLaunchArgs - args for playwright.BrowserType.launch(...)
• BrowserNewContextArgs - args for playwright.BrowserType.new_context(...)
• BrowserLaunchPersistentContextArgs - args for playwright.BrowserType.launch_persistent_context(...)
• Browser Use’s own internal methods

For more details on Playwright’s browser context options, see their launch args documentation.