[Bug]: Since 0.9.1, Linux launches chrome-headless-shell instead of Chromium #2382

crawl4ai version

0.9.1 to 0.9.5

Expected Behavior

On Linux, the default BrowserConfig (chrome_channel="chromium") keeps launching the same browser as in 0.9.0, full Chromium, and the Windows-specific fix stays limited to Windows.

Current Behavior

BrowserManager._build_browser_args no longer passes channel when it is "chromium", on every OS. The comment there explains it as a Windows fix: Playwright looks for a system Chrome there and exits. Without a channel, Playwright launches chrome-headless-shell instead of full Chromium on Linux too, and the two don't behave the same.

The difference we measured: full Chromium moves an http:// navigation to https:// on its own (status 307, internal redirect). chrome-headless-shell requests http:// as given. On sites that only serve HTTPS (port 80 closed, or 403/404 over HTTP), 0.9.0 gets the page and 0.9.1+ fails. On 48 company websites in that situation, 35 that load on 0.9.0 fail on 0.9.5 with Failed on navigating ACS-GOTO or a 403/404 page. The same sites load again on 0.9.5 when channel="chromium" is passed back.

Is this reproducible?

Yes

Code snippets

from crawl4ai.async_configs import BrowserConfig
from crawl4ai.browser_manager import BrowserManager

print(BrowserManager(browser_config=BrowserConfig())._build_browser_args().get("channel"))
# 0.9.0: "chromium" (full Chromium)  /  0.9.1+: None (chrome-headless-shell)

Suggested fix

Skip the default channel on Windows only (sys.platform == "win32"), or let BrowserConfig force it. We currently restore it by wrapping BrowserManager._build_browser_args.