Session Inspection & Recording

See how to debug Oxylabs Agent Browser automation sessions via a real-time graphical interface.

Oxylabs Agent Browser provides Session Inspection and Session Recording to observe browser automation in real time or review video playbacks of past sessions. These visual debugging features allow you to:

• Diagnose complex issues that aren't evident from logs or error messages
• Understand page rendering exactly as the browser sees it
• Verify proper execution of your automation workflows
• Troubleshoot unexpected behavior in real-time

Both tools are available directly under the hb.oxylabs.io domain, alongside your connection endpoint:

• Dashboard at hb.oxylabs.io/dashboard
• Session inspection at hb.oxylabs.io/novnc

Attention: The dashboard and session inspection tools have been moved form headlesify.io into hb.oxylabs.io.

Please update your integration until October 1st. From that date, traffic to the old domains will be automatically routed to the new ones.

Session Inspection (VNC)

Session Inspection tool is a debugging feature that uses VNC (Virtual Network Computing) to provide real-time visual access to your browser automation sessions.

The recommended way to watch a live session is through the Dashboard at hb.oxylabs.io/dashboard, where you can view active sessions without any extra setup.

If you need a direct viewer link (e.g. to embed in your own tooling) you can retrieve the hb.oxylabs.io/novnc viewer URL from the session ID:

const cdp = await ctx.newCDPSession(page);
const { value: sid } = await cdp.send("__session_id");
const vncUrl = `https://hb.oxylabs.io/novnc/?id=${sid}`;
console.log(vncUrl);  // open this URL in your browser

Attention: Session Inspection is being fully integrated into the main dashboard. Once migration is complete, the dashboard will be the single place to monitor and inspect live sessions, and this page will be updated accordingly.

Session Recording

Record your entire Agent Browser session as a video for debugging, auditing, or reviews. To record a session, add the record=true query parameter to your connection URL:

wss://USER:[e-mail]?record=true

By default, every account can store up to 10 recordings. If you need a higher limit, contact Oxylabs support (live chat or email) or your Dedicated Account Manager.

When using persistent sessions, recordings are stored as a single continuous video across all reconnections to that session, rather than creating a separate recording file for each connection.

Customizing recording names

Organize and filter your recordings inside your dashboard by assigning custom names to your videos using the record_name parameter. You can use alphanumeric characters with hyphens and underscores, up to a maximum length of 64 characters (^[a-zA-Z0-9_-]{1,64}$):

wss://USER:[e-mail]?record=true&record_name=payment_checkout_flow_01

Accessing playbacks

All completed recordings are automatically encoded and saved to your Dashboard. You can search, filter, view, and delete your recordings directly at hb.oxylabs.io/dashboard.

Code examples

The following Node.js example shows how to connect to the browser with recording enabled, extract the session ID programmatically, and output the live inspection link to your console.

Features support both Playwright and Puppeteer libraries.

import { chromium } from "playwright";

const username = "USERNAME_abc12";
const password = "PASSWORD";
const endpoint = "hb.oxylabs.io";
// Enable video recording under a custom name
const params = "record=true&record_name=chrome_vnc_test";
const browserUrl = `wss://${username}:${password}@${endpoint}?${params}`;

(async () => {
    // Connect to the browser
    const browser = await chromium.connectOverCDP(browserUrl);
    const ctx = browser.contexts()[0] || (await browser.newContext());
    const page = ctx.pages()[0] || (await ctx.newPage());
    try {
        // 1. Initialize a CDP session on the active page
        const cdpSession = await ctx.newCDPSession(page);
        
        // 2. Query the custom session identifier
        const { value: sessionId } = await cdpSession.send("__session_id");
        
        // 3. Construct and output the session inspection link
        console.log(`Live session inspection link: https://hb.oxylabs.io/novnc/?id=${sessionId}`);
        // Execute your automation steps
        await page.goto("https://example.com");
        
        // Hold session open briefly to allow visual monitoring
        await new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, 10000));
    } catch (error) {
        console.error("Visual session execution failed:", error.message);
    } finally {
        await browser.close();
        console.log("Recording compiled. Access playback at https://hb.oxylabs.io/dashboard");
    }
})();