tf-playwright-stealth

What it is and what it does

tf-playwright-stealth wraps Playwright's page object to inject browser-spoofing logic that masks the telltale signs of automated browser control. It patches navigator properties, disables headless indicators, and injects realistic HTTP headers via its fake-http-header dependency to make Playwright-driven browsers appear more like genuine user agents. The package is a port of puppeteer-extra-plugin-stealth and provides both synchronous and asynchronous APIs that integrate directly into Playwright's existing workflow.

You install it alongside Playwright, then call stealth_sync() or stealth_async() on a page object before navigating to your target. It does not change how you write Playwright code—it simply adds evasion layers to reduce detection risk. The package is actively maintained, supports Python 3.9 through 3.13, and carries no known security vulnerabilities.

Use it for:

• Web scraping sites that block or challenge automated access by detecting headless browser signatures.
• Automated testing of anti-bot systems to verify their detection logic works as intended.
• Legitimate browser automation tasks on sites that require human-like browser behavior to function correctly.
• Gathering data from pages that serve different content to bots versus human browsers.

Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying

Patches Playwright to evade bot-detection systems by spoofing browser features and headers, reducing the likelihood of automated scripts being identified as non-human.

Yes, if you need to run Playwright against sites with bot detection. The package has low install friction, active maintenance, a permissive MIT license, no known vulnerabilities, and a clear single purpose. Be aware that stealth measures are inherently an arms race—detection techniques evolve, and this package's effectiveness depends on staying ahead of that curve.

Install

tf-playwright-stealth on PyPI

pip install tf-playwright-stealth

uv add tf-playwright-stealth

poetry add tf-playwright-stealth

Installing tf-playwright-stealth

Before you install

Low friction installation with only two runtime dependencies (playwright and fake-http-header). The package is actively maintained with a recent commit on 2026-08-09 and has been in active development since its first release on 2024-03-07.

License in practice

MIT license permits commercial and private use with minimal restrictions, requiring only that you retain the license notice in distributions.

Quickstart

pip install tf-playwright-stealth

from playwright.sync_api import sync_playwright
from tf_playwright_stealth import stealth_sync

with sync_playwright() as p:
    browser = p.chromium.launch(headless=True)
    page = browser.new_page()
    stealth_sync(page)
    page.goto("https://example.com")
    browser.close()

Requires Playwright to be installed and a Chromium browser available; intended for Python 3.9 or later.

Verify before relying

• Effectiveness against specific bot-detection systems or services beyond the bot.sannysoft.com test shown in the description.
• Whether stealth measures remain effective as detection techniques evolve or as Playwright itself is updated.
• Performance overhead introduced by stealth spoofing compared to unpatched Playwright usage.

Package facts

Evidence: tf_playwright_stealth-1.2.0-py3-none-any.whl

Tags

More WWW/HTTP packages

Further reading