Kameleo has a few technical terms used throughout the documentation and the website, so we'll document the meanings of some of these terms here.
Spoofing
Spoofing is the process of altering your device’s identifying information. In this case, Kameleo changes your browser fingerprint for every browser you launch.
Base Profile
Base profiles are real-world browser fingerprint configurations that are used for instantiating virtual browser profiles. This way the browser profile will have a consistent footprint after the spoofing mechanism is applied as most data are derived from a real browser. The rest of the data are generated automatically upon creation. You can filter in hundreds of thousands of base profiles to have profiles with the required language, operating system, and browser.
If you create multiple virtual browser profiles from the same base profile, they will have different browser fingerprints but both will remain natural.
Virtual Browser Profile
A Virtual Browser Profile contains all parts of the browser fingerprint with its settings and all the browsing data. This way, every profile will have a different configuration and websites will see it as another computer. Every time you reopen a profile you will be able to continue your work, as history, cookies, logins, passwords, bookmarks are all stored in them.
Profile's Lifetime States
Virtual Browser Profiles can have different states during their entire lifetime.
- Created: New profiles are in the Created state by default.
- Starting: When a profile is launching it is in the Starting state.
- Running: When the browser is launched and it is ready to operate, the profile will switch from Starting to Running state.
- Terminating: When the profile stopped it will change from Running to Terminated. While this happens and the browser quits, the profile is in the Terminating state.
- Terminated: Once the profile is stopped and all data is handled by Kameleo the profile goes into the Terminated state. It is ready to be saved or restarted.
Profile's Persistence States
Since Kameleo v3 we are storing all the virtual browser profile data locally in the workspace folder of Kameleo.
Virtual Browser Profiles only have two different states for their persistence. It basically reflects whether the up-to-date version of the virtual browser profile is stored on the disk.
- Saved: When a profile is freshly created, it is already stored in the workspace. After a successful update on the profile, the settings of the profile are also stored in the workspace. After stopping a running browser, Kameleo saves all the browsing data to the workspace as well.
- Unsaved: When a virtual browser profile is started, the profile will have this state until you stop it.
To summarize, an up-to-date version of virtual browser profiles with Created and Terminated lifetime states are saved locally to the workspace.
If you wish to use Kameleo profiles on another PC, you should use the ImportProfile and ExportProfile features.
Import & Export virtual browser profiles
Virtual browser profiles are stored locally on your PC in Kameleo's workspace folder. If you would like to access them on another PC you can import and export them to .kameleo profiles.
Built-in Browsers
Kameleo is shipped with two fully functioning browsers:
- Chroma (a Chromium-based natively modified browser)
- Junglefox (a Firefox-based natively modified browser)
Launcher
Launcher for Desktop profiles was deprecated in Kameleo v3.
Base Profiles and browser fingerprint settings will determine how websites will see your browser after the spoofing mechanism is applied. We support four different browsers on the Base Profile level, but we provide only two built-in browsers. Desktop profiles are emulated with our recommendations.
| Browser Product of the Base Profile | Browser Engine started |
|---|---|
| Chrome | Chroma |
| Firefox | Junglefox |
| Safari | Chroma |
| Edge | Chroma |
Emulating Edge and Safari with Chroma is still the best selection, as it is not possible to natively modify those browsers.
If you would like to automate mobile profiles read below.
Desktop Profiles
Desktop profiles are Base Profiles that are visible as desktop browsers by websites, and they are emulated in Kameleo's built-in browsers.
Mobile Profiles
Mobile profiles are Base Profiles that are visible as mobile browsers by websites, and they are emulated by the Kameleo Mobile App by default. If you would like to automate mobile profiles, you should change the launcher of the profile to chromium. Then Chroma will emulate the mobile profiles, and it can be automated.
External Spoofing Engine
Using the External Spoogin Engine is not recommended since Kameleo v3.
When a profile's Launcher option is set to External, or when you are running Mobile Profiles, the External Spoofing Engine will start. The External Spoofing Engine is a separate process that is managed by the CLI component. External browsers (such as the Kameleo Mobile App running on your device) can connect to it as an HTTP proxy, and the Spoofing mechanism will be applied to the browser this way.
CLI Component / Headless Mode
Kameleo's core logic is implemented in the CLI component. The GUI component is using the API that the CLI provides. It makes the interaction easy with Kameleo. If you want to automate Kameleo you only need to run the CLI component (Kameleo.CLI.exe). You will be able to do everything from your script that you can do on the GUI.
By default, Kameleo is installed at the following location: C:\Users\YOUR_USERNAME\AppData\Local\Programs\Kameleo
Application Logs
Checking the log files when you encounter problems is helpful to get a better understanding of how Kameleo works. The log files are generated in the Logs folder on a daily basis. As Kameleo has multiple components, each one creates its own file named after the following pattern: COMPONENTNAME-YYYYMMDD.txt
By default, the Logs folder is available at the following location: C:\Users\YOUR_USERNAME\AppData\Local\Programs\Kameleo\Logs