Trouble using session/cookies through userDataDir?

Steps to reproduce

Hey all! Not sure at all if this is possible but wanted to be sure. Just wanted to clarify. I’m using userDataDir to point to my Default and active profile. But with headless: false I’ve attempted loading a variety of sites and none show me as logged in.

The docs don’t necessarily clarify either way, nor did a quick search.

What steps will reproduce the problem?

import pup from 'puppeteer'

async function run() {
  const browser = await pup.launch({
    userDataDir: '~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default',
    headless: false,
  })
  const page = await browser.newPage()
  await page.goto('https://facebook.com')
  await browser.close()
}

try {
  run()
} catch (err) {
  console.error(err)
}

What is the expected result?

Uses the session from my regular Chrome.

What happens instead?

No session.

[MrXyfir]

Any (reasonable) solution to this yet? I think I’ve tried every possible suggestion and nothing has worked. Is the only option manually saving and injecting cookies?

// Saving the cookies

const client = await page.target().createCDPSession();
// This gets all cookies from all URLs, not just the current URL
const cookies: puppeteer.Cookie[] = (await client.send(
  'Network.getAllCookies'
))['cookies'];

console.log('Saving', cookies.length, 'cookies');
await fs.writeJSON(cookiesPath, cookies);

// Loading the cookies

try {
  const cookies: puppeteer.Cookie[] = await fs.readJSON(cookiesPath);
  console.log('Loading', cookies.length, 'cookies into browser');
  await page.setCookie(...cookies);
} catch (err) {}

Note that fs is actually fs-extra.

[MrXyfir]

@entrptaher Yep, I encountered those issues. There is no good solution as far as I’m aware. Any solution would be a fragile hack. Pretty much you’d have to do the same thing as with cookies: save them elsewhere and restore the data when needed. However this is not a simple task by any means because you cannot easily load and set all of the local storage data for all domains at once like you can with cookies. You would need a frame open to a URL of the same origin you wish to manage the local storage of. Ultimately it wasn’t worth the effort (for me at least) to write a similar system as I had with cookies.

I think the best solution is to keep complaining until the Chrome and/or Chrome DevTools Protocol developers fix this. If I remember correctly, the issue isn’t really with puppeteer, since it mostly is just a wrapper for the DevTools protocol.