I think a headless browser runs somewhere in the background without an interface. Used to automate stuff. A browser in the terminal will have an interface, the terminal text interface. And you'll be reading the website, not take screenshots or scrape or test websites automatically.
this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2025
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Do terminal browsers run javascript? Because headless browsers do and that's a big part of their usefulness.
Depends.
- Chawan has experimental JS support, if I remember correctly.
- ELinks used to have a patch that enabled JS.
- Browsh and Carbonyl support JS, but they're running headless Firefox and Chromium, respectively, under the hood.
A terminal browser is something you use. A headless browser is something which either another program uses or which uses itself.
A terminal browser shows you the website in the terminal. A headless browser doesn't.
I don't think it is. To me, that's like asking how a terminal text editor is different than a headless text editor. In both cases you'd be using the same application. So I'd assume for a browser that in both terminal and headless mode you'd use, for example, Lynx.
@Cat_Daddy@hexbear.net how is Lynx different from curl ??
Curl just spits out raw text. Lynx renders it.