[Bug]: Headless mode consumes too much?

[Tonyx97]

Bug expectation

Hi, I'm assuming headless mode removes all the rendering completely and so on so all it does is execute the js scripts and fill the HTML even though it's not being shown of course. I'm scraping websites, the problem is when I run everything in headless mode, if I open 30 pages (tabs) in the same browser context with headless = false then it will run smoothly, decent CPU usage. If I do the same but in headless it will use a lot of CPU, reaching 100% depending on the website you scrap. Now, the thing is that the refresh rate of javascript rendering and the HTML updates for each single tab seems to be the same in headless and non-headless both so why is it consuming so much in headless? Is there any option I don't know about to reduce the usage of each tab or something? Is there a way to "idle" (make it run less often?) the headless browser the same way the non-headless does? Thanks.

Bug behavior

• Flaky
• PDF

Minimal, reproducible example

const puppeteer = require("puppeteer");

async function main()
{
	const _browser = await puppeteer.launch({
		defaultViewport: null,
		headless: false,	// change to true to verify it consumes more
		ignoreHTTPSErrors: true,
		ignoreDefaultArgs: ["--enable-automation"],
		args:
		[
			'--kiosks',
     		'--disable-accelerated-2d-canvas',
			'--disable-backgrounding-occluded-windows',
			'--disable-renderer-backgrounding',
			'--disable-canvas-aa',
			'--disable-2d-canvas-clip-aa',
			'--disable-gl-drawing-for-tests',
			'--disable-dev-shm-usage', 
			'--disable-gpu',
			'--no-zygote', 
			'--use-gl=desktop', 
			'--hide-scrollbars',
			'--mute-audio',
			'--no-first-run',
			'--disable-infobars',
			'--disable-breakpad', 
			'--no-sandbox',
			'--disable-setuid-sandbox'
		],
	});
	
	let pages = [];

	for (let i = 0; i < 30; ++i)
	{
		let page = await _browser.newPage();

		await page.goto('https://store.steampowered.com/charts/mostplayed'); // use any website as an example
		
		pages.push(page);
	}

	while (true)
	{
		let promises = [];

		for (const page of pages)
		{
			async function parsePage()
			{
				await page.waitForNetworkIdle(); // this is optional
				
				let content = await page.content();
	
				console.log(content.length);
			};

			promises.push(parsePage());
			
			// do stuff with page
		}

		await Promise.all(promises);
	}
}

main();

Error string

no error

Puppeteer configuration

{
defaultViewport: null,
		headless: false,
		ignoreHTTPSErrors: true,
		ignoreDefaultArgs: ["--enable-automation"],
		args:
		[
			'--kiosks',
     		        '--disable-accelerated-2d-canvas',
			'--disable-backgrounding-occluded-windows',
			'--disable-renderer-backgrounding',
			'--disable-canvas-aa',
			'--disable-2d-canvas-clip-aa',
			'--disable-gl-drawing-for-tests',
			'--disable-dev-shm-usage', 
			'--disable-gpu',
			'--no-zygote', 
			'--use-gl=desktop', 
			'--hide-scrollbars',
			'--mute-audio',
			'--no-first-run',
			'--disable-infobars',
			'--disable-breakpad', 
			'--no-sandbox',
			'--disable-setuid-sandbox'
		]
}

Puppeteer version

v19.8.0

Node version

v18.15.0

Package manager

npm

Package manager version

9.5.0

Operating system

Windows

[github-actions]

This issue has an outdated Puppeteer version: 19.8.0. Please verify your issue on the latest 19.8.1 version. Then update the form accordingly.

---

Analyzer run

[OrKoN]

You can try using the new headless mode: https://developer.chrome.com/articles/new-headless/ You should get the same behaviour as with the headful mode. As for the CPU consumption, it might have smth to do with the fact that you disable GPU (that might be ignored in headful). In any case, if you have a bug report about the headless performance, please open an issue at crbug.com as Puppeteer is only a client to the browser binary.