_{Beta • Headless Safari automation for Expo + React Native}

Expo Headless Browser

Drive a zero-UI WKWebView session from JavaScript to crawl, scrape, and test the web directly inside your Expo app.

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Table of contents

1. What is Expo Headless Browser?
2. Key features
3. When should you use it?
4. Getting started
5. Quickstart
6. API highlights
7. Example flows
8. Architecture at a glance
9. Roadmap
10. Contributing
11. Community & support
12. License

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What is Expo Headless Browser?

expo-headless-browser is an Expo Module that embeds an off-screen WKWebView and exposes a high-level JavaScript driver you can use to script fully fledged browsing sessions. It is designed for mobile-native data collection, scraping, QA automation, and content preview workflows that need to run from an Expo app, background service, or custom dev tool.

The package is published on npm: expo-headless-browser.

⚠️ Status: iOS is implemented. Android support and production hardening are being tracked in the roadmap below. Expect breaking changes until 1.0.

Key features

• Headless sessions – spin up isolated, non-persistent browser contexts per task without showing UI.
• DOM automation – query DOM nodes via CSS selectors, IDs, class names, or free-text search, then click, read text, or inspect attributes.
• Script injection – run arbitrary JavaScript inside the page context to interact with frameworks or expose custom helpers.
• HTML extraction – dump the entire HTML, capture titles, and read the current URL for audit trails.
• Expo-first developer experience – ship as a standard Expo module with TypeScript types, tree-shakeable bundling, and an included example app.

When should you use it?

• Build on-device scrapers or research tools where sending credentials to a server-side bot is not an option.
• Run integration tests against live sites from an Expo dev client.
• Prototype background tasks that need to fetch dynamic content rendered by JavaScript.
• Capture metadata (OG tags, structured data, etc.) before opening a link in a normal browser view.

If you only need static HTTP fetches or HTML parsing, use fetch + cheerio. Reach for Expo Headless Browser when you must execute client-side JavaScript or interact with the DOM.

Inspired by Selenium.

Getting started

Requirements

• Expo SDK 54+ / React Native 0.81+
• Xcode 15+ (for iOS builds)
• Node.js 18+

Installation

npm install expo-headless-browser
# or
yarn add expo-headless-browser

For bare Expo / React Native projects, make sure you have installed and configured Expo modules and then run:

npx pod-install

Managed Expo apps can use the module via config plugins once the package lands in an Expo SDK release. Until then you can run it inside the Expo Dev Client / Development Build.

Quickstart

import HeadlessBrowser from 'expo-headless-browser';

async function scrapeHeadline() {
  const browser = new HeadlessBrowser();

  await browser.get('https://news.ycombinator.com');
  await browser.wait(500); // allow client-side scripts to hydrate

  const title = await browser.getTitle();
  const firstStory = await browser.getElementByCss('.athing .titleline a');

  console.log('Page title:', title);
  console.log('Top story:', await firstStory?.text());

  await browser.close();
}

👉 Run cd example && npm install && npx expo start to try a pre-wired playground.

API highlights

API	Description
new HeadlessBrowser()	Creates a new isolated session and boots an off-screen WKWebView.
browser.get(url)	Navigate to a URL and wait for the load event.
browser.reload() / browser.close()	Refresh or dispose the session.
browser.executeScript(script)	Evaluate arbitrary JavaScript and return the serialized value.
browser.dumptHtml()	Capture the page HTML snapshot.
browser.getElementByCss(selector) / getElementsByCss	Query one or multiple DOM nodes via CSS selectors.
browser.getElementById(id) / getElementByClassName(class)	Convenience selectors.
browser.findElementByText(text)	Walk the DOM tree to find the first element that contains the given text.
element.text() / element.click() / element.getAttribute(name)	Interact with element handles returned by the selectors above.

All APIs return promises. Call await browser.wait(ms) to pause between actions when the target website needs extra hydration time.

Example flows

Fill out a form

const form = await browser.getElementByCss('form#credentials');
if (!form) throw new Error('Form not found');

const emailInput = await browser.executeScript<string>(`
  (function () {
    const el = document.querySelector('form#credentials input[type=email]');
    el.value = 'user@example.com';
    return el.value;
  })();
`);

const submit = await browser.getElementByCss('form#credentials button[type=submit]');
await submit?.click();
await browser.wait(1500);

Collect product cards

const cards = await browser.getElementsByCss('.product-card');
const results = await Promise.all(
  cards.map(async card => ({
    name: await card.text(),
    href: await card.getAttribute('href'),
  }))
);

These snippets can run inside your Expo app, a background task, or even a CLI powered by expo run:ios --device.

Architecture at a glance

1. JavaScript driver (src/ExpoHeadlessBrowserModule.ts) exposes a typed Driver class that wraps the native module APIs.
2. Native module manages WebKit sessions, injects a lightweight runtime to map DOM nodes to opaque IDs, and forwards method calls such as navigate, executeScript, and elementClick.
3. Session manager keeps every WKWebView isolated with non-persistent storage so cookies/cache never leak between runs.
4. Bridge uses Expo Modules Core, so there is no custom native setup—install, run pod install, and start automating.

Because everything rides on standard Expo infrastructure, you can leverage OTA updates, TypeScript, and metro bundling just like any other module.

Roadmap

• Android implementation powered by WebView + WebViewAssetLoader.
• Screenshot and PDF capture helpers.
• Built-in waits (waitForElement, waitForNavigation) exposed to JS.
• Configurable user agents and HTTP headers per session.

Track progress or propose new ideas via GitHub Issues.

Contributing

Contributions are very welcome! Open an issue describing the feature/bug first, then:

1. Fork the repo and install dependencies.
2. Work inside the src/ folder and run npm run build to sync TypeScript to build/.
3. Use the example/ app to test end-to-end (npx expo start).
4. Submit a PR with screenshots/logs that prove the change works.

Please follow the Expo contribution guidelines for code style and commit hygiene.

Community & support

• Questions / ideas: open a GitHub Discussion or file an issue.
• Bugs: provide a minimal repro inside the example/ app so we can debug quickly.
• Releases: watch the npm package or star the repo to get notified about beta drops.

License

MIT © Emanuele Sacco. Use it commercially, ship it in your apps, and drop a star if it helps you build something cool.