browser-use - Apostate

browser-use drives Chrome over the DevTools protocol and lets a model decide each step. It can launch a browser itself, but its default switches change what a page sees, so start Apostate yourself and let browser-use connect to it.

This page was tested with browser-use 0.13.10 and Apostate 0.4.3. browser-use changes quickly; check the names below against your version.

Why not let browser-use launch it

browser-use adds its own switches to every browser it launches. Among them:

Switch	What a page sees
`--disable-speech-synthesis-api`, `--disable-speech-api`	`speechSynthesis` is missing, although the persona lists voices
`--enable-network-information-downlink-max`	`navigator.connection.downlinkMax` exists, which desktop Chrome does not have
`--disable-component-update`	Widevine and other preinstalled components do not load

It also emulates the viewport in headless mode, grants clipboard and notification permissions to every site, and draws highlight boxes into pages when it clicks. Starting the browser yourself and connecting over CDP avoids all of it.

The example

examples/agents/browser-use/agent.py starts Apostate with a DevTools port and connects browser-use to it:

pip install apostate browser-use
apostate install
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=...
python3 agent.py "Open https://example.com and say what the page is for."

python3 agent.py --check starts the browser and connects without calling a model:

title example.com
url https://example.com/

The two parts that matter:

def start_apostate(port: int) -> subprocess.Popen:
    env = dict(os.environ)
    env.update(LANGUAGE="en-US", LANG="en_US.UTF-8", LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8", LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8",
               GOOGLE_API_KEY="no", GOOGLE_DEFAULT_CLIENT_ID="no", GOOGLE_DEFAULT_CLIENT_SECRET="no")
    args = [
        str(ensure_binary()),
        f"--user-data-dir={PROFILE}",
        "--fingerprint-platform=windows",
        "--fingerprint-locale=en-US",
        "--fingerprint-timezone=America/New_York",
        f"--remote-debugging-port={port}",
        "--headless=new",
        "--no-first-run",
        "--no-default-browser-check",
    ]
    ...

def connect(port: int) -> Browser:
    return Browser(
        cdp_url=f"http://127.0.0.1:{port}",
        headless=False,
        no_viewport=True,
        permissions=[],
        highlight_elements=False,
        keep_alive=True,
    )

The environment holds the locale variables the Python package would set, and GOOGLE_API_KEY=no with the two client variables, which keep Chromium’s “Google API keys are missing” bar off the first tab of a launch without a driver.
The user data directory keeps the machine. Its first launch draws one and stores the seed; later launches present the same machine. Add --fingerprint=SEED to pin one instead.
headless=False stops browser-use from emulating a viewport. The browser is already headless.
permissions=[] and highlight_elements=False keep browser-use from granting permissions to every site and from injecting overlays.

Behind a proxy

Add --proxy-server=socks5://user:pass@proxy.example:1080 to args. Apostate takes the credential off the switch and answers the proxy’s authentication itself. Set --fingerprint-locale and --fingerprint-timezone to the exit’s, since this route skips the package’s GeoIP lookup. Proxies and Locale and timezone cover both.

Telemetry

browser-use sends anonymous usage data unless ANONYMIZED_TELEMETRY=false. The example sets it and BROWSER_USE_CLOUD_SYNC=false before importing browser-use.

​Why not let browser-use launch it

​The example

​Behind a proxy

​Telemetry

Why not let browser-use launch it

The example

Behind a proxy

Telemetry