Remote Firefox Browser in the Cloud – noVNC Desktop Session

A live, remote-controlled Firefox browser you drive from your own browser window — no local install, no extension, no VM to provision. Start the Actor, open the link, and you are looking at a real Linux desktop with Firefox running on it, streamed to your tab over noVNC. Click, type, log in, open devtools: it is a real screen, not a screenshot.

Useful for: manual testing and QA in a clean disposable browser, poking at sites that block headless automation, a scratch browser for tasks you don't want touching your own machine, browsing from a proxy IP in another country, or showing someone a running session live.

How do I open a session?

1. Run the Actor (optionally set startUrl to open a specific page).
2. Once it is running in Standby mode, open its Standby URL in your own browser.
3. You land on the noVNC client — click Connect and you are looking at the live desktop. Use your mouse and keyboard as normal.

The session lives as long as the Standby run does. It shuts itself down after about five minutes with no traffic, and in any case when the run hits its timeout (one hour by default — raise it in the run options if you need longer). You can also stop the run from the Apify console at any time.

What can I configure?

Field	What it does	Default
startUrl	Page Firefox opens with on launch	about:blank
vncPassword	Password required to view and control the session	none (open access)
screenWidth / screenHeight	Resolution of the virtual screen, in pixels	1360 x 768
proxyConfiguration	Route Firefox through Apify Proxy (optionally by group and country) or your own proxy URL	none (direct connection)

Set vncPassword unless the run is short-lived and private — without one, anyone who has the Standby URL can drive the browser. Note that it is a plain input field, not an Apify Secret input: the container reads its input with a plain API call at start-up and cannot decrypt Apify's secret-input encryption. Treat it as a short-lived session password, not a credential you reuse.

The input is read once, when the container starts. Changing it affects the next run, not one that is already warm.

What is actually running inside?

Component	What it is there for
Debian 12 (bookworm)	Base image, slim variant
Firefox ESR	The browser itself — a normal headful build, from Debian's own package
Xvfb	Virtual X11 display (:99, 24-bit colour) at the resolution you asked for — a screen with no physical monitor behind it
fluxbox	Minimal window manager, so Firefox has a title bar, right-click desktop menu and real windows
x11vnc	Exports that X display as a VNC server, in shared mode
noVNC + websockify	Translate VNC into something a plain browser tab can render, which is why you need nothing installed locally
FoxyProxy	Signed extension, pre-installed and pre-configured from your proxyConfiguration — it is what lets Firefox use an authenticated proxy without a password prompt
dbus-x11, fonts-liberation	Session bus and a base set of fonts, so pages render with sane typefaces

Based on: https://www.trickster.dev/post/running-gui-apps-within-docker-containers/

What do these terms mean?

• Headful vs headless — a headless browser has no screen and is driven only by code. This one is headful: it draws to a real (virtual) display, so the page sees a window, a size, fonts and a cursor, and you interact with it by hand.
• noVNC — a VNC client written in JavaScript that runs inside a web page. Your tab talks WebSocket to websockify, which talks VNC to x11vnc. Nothing to install on your side.
• Xvfb — the X server that keeps a framebuffer in memory instead of sending it to a monitor. It is the "screen" Firefox believes it has.
• Standby mode — an Apify run that stays warm and answers HTTP requests instead of running once and exiting. It is what makes "open a link, get a live desktop" possible; a normal Actor run would have nothing to open.

How much does it cost?

The Actor charge is a single flat fee, billed once per run when the container starts (see the Pricing tab) — it does not grow with how long you stay connected. On top of that you pay Apify platform usage for the time the run is up, which is the part worth watching: this is a desktop plus a browser, so it is provisioned with 1 GB of RAM in Standby mode. The five-minute idle shutdown and the run timeout are your safety net; stopping the run when you are done is the cheapest habit.

FAQ

Do I need to install anything? No. Any modern browser can open the noVNC client — there is no VNC client, extension, agent or SSH key to set up. It works from a locked-down machine where you cannot install software.

Is this a scraper? No. It is a browser you operate by hand. There is no dataset output, no crawl input and no result rows; the "output" is the live session. Use it when you want to look at something yourself rather than extract it in bulk.

Can I drive it with Playwright, Selenium or CDP? Not over the network. The Actor exposes only the noVNC web endpoint — no remote-debugging port, no WebDriver, no CDP socket. It is built for hands-on use.

Does anything persist between runs? No. Every run starts a fresh container and builds a new Firefox profile, so cookies, logins, history, bookmarks and anything you download are gone when the run stops. Nothing is copied to a key-value store. Treat it as a disposable machine — that is the point — and if you need a file out of it, upload it somewhere from inside the session before you stop the run.

Is my session private? Standby runs for this Actor are single-tenant, so you get your own container rather than sharing one with other users of the Actor. Access control is the vncPassword: with no password, the Standby URL alone is enough for anyone who has it.

Can two people watch the same session? Yes. x11vnc runs in shared mode and Standby allows up to four concurrent requests per run, so a couple of viewers can connect to the same desktop at once and see the same cursor. Everyone connected can also control it.

How do I browse from a different country? Set proxyConfiguration to Apify Proxy and pick a country (or a proxy group); the Actor turns that into a proxy URL and pre-seeds FoxyProxy with it, credentials included. A custom proxy works too — http, https, socks4 and socks5 URLs are all recognised. Only the first URL in proxyUrls is used; the Actor does not rotate between them, because a hand-driven session wants one stable IP.

Which apps besides Firefox are available? Only Firefox and the fluxbox desktop are installed. There is no terminal emulator, file manager or second browser in the image.

What if the screen is the wrong size? Set screenWidth and screenHeight before the run. The virtual display is created at start-up and is not resized when you resize your browser window, so pick the resolution you want up front.

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