Playwright's bundled Chromium has a distinct build fingerprint (build ID,
uniform WebGL/codec lists, HeadlessChrome residue) that anti-bot services
increasingly flag. Driving a system-installed Google Chrome via Playwright's
channel option sheds that signal and aligns sec-ch-ua with UA more cleanly.
Changes:
- Add BrowserOptions.Channel string field (chrome, chrome-beta, chromium,
msedge; empty = default).
- When stealth+headless+Chromium and Channel is empty, default to "chrome"
(was "chromium"). Explicit Channel values always win, so callers can opt
back to "chromium" or pick another channel.
- Merge Channel in mergeOptions.
- Expose --channel/--ch flag on cmd/browser for A/B fingerprint testing.
Callers must have the chosen browser installed on the host
(e.g. `playwright install chrome`). Firefox and WebKit paths are untouched.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 <noreply@anthropic.com>
steve
c3be14095a