Your browser is telling sites it is being driven
This is the one row where the reader is not misreading you. When software controls a browser, the browser says so, on purpose. If you are a person and the flag is set, something on your machine started the browser in that mode.
Browsers expose a property called navigator.webdriver. It is false in normal use and true when the browser is being controlled by automation software, such as the tools developers use to test websites. A browser started in headless mode, without a window, also names itself “HeadlessChrome” in its user agent. And some drivers leave named objects behind in the page.
Every bot check reads these first, because they are not guesses. A browser that reports them is being controlled by software, and the check is right to treat it that way.
How a person ends up with the flag set
- A window opened by a test tool. Selenium, Playwright, Puppeteer and similar tools open browser windows that look normal. If you or a script you ran left one open and you browsed in it, the flag is on.
- Apps that drive a browser for you. Some download managers, price trackers, social-media schedulers and “AI browsing” helpers start a browser under automation control.
- Remote-control or screen-sharing extensions that use the browser’s debugging interface.
- A browser started with special command-line options, often from a shortcut someone else made.
How to clear it
- Close every browser window. Check the task manager or Activity Monitor and end any browser process still running.
- Start the browser from its own icon, not from a shortcut or another app.
- Take a reading. If the flag is still set, look at the extensions with debugger or remote-control permissions and turn them off one at a time.
Automation flag
This browser is telling every site it is being driven by software.
- Close any browser window that was opened by a testing or automation tool, including Selenium, Playwright and Puppeteer.
- If you did not start one, check your extensions — a remote-control or screen-sharing extension can set the same flag.
- Reopen the browser normally from its own icon and run this reading again.
This row's prior is chosen from the reading itself rather than from a single fixed number, so the arithmetic is printed on your own row instead of here. How the ranking works →
Questions about the “Automation flag” row
- What is navigator.webdriver?
- A property every major browser exposes that is true when automation software is controlling the browser and false otherwise. It exists so that automated sessions identify themselves, and every bot check reads it.
- Why does every site say I’m a robot even after a restart?
- If the flag survives a restart from the browser’s own icon, something starts the browser in automation mode every time: an app, a startup shortcut, or an extension with debugging permission. Ending all browser processes and starting it cleanly isolates which.
- Does an ad blocker set this flag?
- No. Blockers change the page, which is a different row. Only software that takes control of the browser sets the automation flag.
READ AT PRIOR TABLE ED. 1.0.0 · 2026-10-13 · ASSUMED, NOT MEASURED
The rank is taken against 15 written assumptions about how common each value is and 16 written weights about how much each one matters. 9 of them we think are probably wrong. Real counts from the browsers these sites have read appear beside a row, never inside its rank. Read the assumptions →
The rows you cannot fix from a settings page
A VPN you need for work, an address your ISP shares with a thousand other subscribers, a laptop with no graphics chip, a hardened profile that breaks the sites it was meant to protect — none of these have a checkbox. What is left is to present a reading that is internally consistent and ordinary on purpose, instead of one that is accidentally strange.
Donut Browser does that at the engine level: its Wayfern Chromium fork applies the fingerprint through CDP injection rather than patching JavaScript in the page, and it refuses to launch a profile whose proxy exit country, time zone and language contradict the profile's own fingerprint — which is the top row of most readings on this site. It is AGPL-3.0, it has no telemetry of any kind, and it runs on macOS, Windows and Linux.
Stated plainly: this site has no test results showing what any particular anti-bot service does with any particular browser, and neither does Donut Browser's own repository. What can be checked is the source, which is public.
Free · AGPL-3.0 · github.com/zhom/donutbrowser