Changelog #014
Hey everyone! This week we've been focused on quality-of-life improvements and expanding our CAPTCHA solving capabilities. We've also squashed a bunch of bugs to make your Steel experience smoother than ever. Let's dive in!
⭐ New
Enhanced Copy/Paste Support for Browser Control
Taking control of a browser session just got more intuitive! You can now copy and paste content when manually interacting with Steel sessions through the debug URL. This makes human-in-the-loop workflows much smoother, especially when you need to quickly input data or transfer information between applications. (huge shoutout to @aspectrr for implementing it!)
Available on: Steel-browser (OSS) 🛠️
🔧 Bugfixes/Improvements
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Added custom WebSocket proxy handlers for CDP service, enabling advanced traffic routing configurations (Steel-browser)
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Fixed WSL2 compatibility - resolved 0.0.0.0 host binding issues for Windows Subsystem for Linux users (Steel-browser)
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Optimized session recording extension, increasing coverage of events and proper length tracking
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Fixed multi-region support issues that were causing connectivity problems for some users
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Resolved circular reference errors that occasionally caused stack trace failures
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Improved address bar behavior in live sessions - now uses Google search for non-HTTP queries
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Fixed race conditions during deployment that could cause session initialization delays
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Made API key optional in SDK for easier local development workflows
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Re-enabled exhaustive stealth tests to ensure our anti-bot measures stay effective
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Updated user agent metadata to maintain compatibility with latest browser standards
🏡 Housekeeping
We've been investing heavily in our testing and monitoring infrastructure. While these changes happen behind the scenes, they help us:
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Catch and fix issues before they impact your automations
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Monitor success rates across different sites and scenarios
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Continuously improve our anti-bot detection avoidance
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Ensure Steel stays fast and reliable at scale
This foundational work might not be flashy, but it's crucial for delivering the rock-solid browser automation platform you deserve.
💖 First-time contributors
Special thanks to @akarray for introducing CDP_DOMAIN to enhance flexibility in setting the debugger's domain + fixing WSL2 compatibility issues for Windows users!
As always, thanks for testing out the Steel beta. We really look forward to more of your feedback and continuing to build with this awesome, curious, and supportive community.