Skip to content

BetterWright 1.8.0

Choose a tag to compare

View all tags
@SSHdotCodes SSHdotCodes released this 12 Aug 20:08
· 119 commits to main since this release
v1.8.0
6aca5e3
This commit was created on GitHub.com and signed with GitHub’s verified signature.
GPG key ID: B5690EEEBB952194
Verified
Learn about vigilant mode.

BetterWright 1.8.0 replaces the Obscura-backed default with native BetterChromium 151 and ships verified browser archives for macOS arm64, Linux x64, and Windows x64.

Highlights

  • BetterChromium is now the required/default browser on supported platforms; CloakBrowser remains an explicit compatibility opt-out.
  • All three BetterChromium archives are publicly available and SHA-256 pinned.
  • Browser identity is centralized across launch arguments, contexts, rendering surfaces, and WebGPU.
  • Idle pages use Chromium's native frozen/active lifecycle while preserving timers and animation state across parking.
  • Browser-evidence checklists prevent tasks from completing without ordered, current-page proof.
  • The Stealth Bench runner now fingerprints the intended binary, sanitizes proxy metadata, rejects CAPTCHA/screenshot benchmark paths, and fails closed on backend drift.

Measured performance

Seven interleaved runs on an Apple M4 Max compared with the original, pre-optimization 1.8.0 implementation:

Measurement Result
Warm startup 7.3% faster
Navigation plus proof capture 21.2% faster
Cold/warm peak process-tree RSS 12.0% lower
Active CPU 31.4% lower
Active renderer processes 3 → 2
Cold startup 0.8% faster
100-turn RSS growth 4.6% lower

The gains come from removing Chromium 151's unused spare renderer in the normal one-page workload and encoding proof screenshots at CSS-pixel scale without changing the page's DPR-2 browser identity.

Against the standard 1.7.2 installation in the same seven-run harness, cold and warm startup improved 22.4% and 21.2%, while navigation plus proof improved 91.3%. Cold/warm peak RSS was 1.9%/1.5% higher. BetterChromium remains resident, so idle RSS is higher than 1.7.2's Obscura-backed idle state; peak RSS compares periods where both versions are actively producing browser proofs.

Verification

The release commit passed the protected Linux browser suite, package integrity checks, dependency audit, and unit/type/build testing on Node 22 and 24 across Linux, macOS, and Windows.

Install with:

npm install betterwright@1.8.0
npx betterwright setup

Full details are in the changelog.

Assets 2
Loading