Headless Mode

Kernel browsers ship in headful mode by default. In headful mode, the launched browser has a corresponding GUI. This enables features like live view and replays. headless mode runs without a visual interface. They generally run faster and have a lighter footprint (1 GB by default rather than headful’s 8 GB), resulting in significant cost savings. This is useful for short-lived or highly concurrent browser automations. Some bot detectors may detect headless mode. for more memory on a non-gpu browser, set memory to 2GiB or 4GiB when you create a headless browser or headless browser pool. the default remains 1GiB. To launch a Kernel browser in headless mode, set its config:

import Kernel from '@onkernel/sdk';

const kernel = new Kernel();

const kernelBrowser = await kernel.browsers.create({
  headless: true,
});

from kernel import Kernel

kernel = Kernel()

kernel_browser = kernel.browsers.create(headless=True)

package main

import (
	"context"

	"github.com/kernel/kernel-go-sdk"
)

func main() {
	ctx := context.Background()
	client := kernel.NewClient()

	kernelBrowser, err := client.Browsers.New(ctx, kernel.BrowserNewParams{
		Headless: kernel.Bool(true),
	})
	if err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}
	_ = kernelBrowser
}

Live View and Replays are not available in headless mode.

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