Haylxon

Shoot before the blink

Haylxon(hxn) — is a fast, minimal screenshot tool for webpages using Chrome's headless mode. Supports local and remote browsers, tab pooling, and parallel execution.

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Features

• Local or remote — launch a local browser or connect to a remote Chromium instance via CDP
• Tab pooling — reuse browser tabs across URLs instead of spawning new ones every time
• Parallel — configurable concurrency with --tabs
• Flexible input — single URL, file, or stdin
• Output formats — PNG, JPEG, WebP, fullpage, NDJSON metadata
• Portable — Linux, macOS, Windows, Termux

Installation

Binary

Download from releases, or:

wget -qO- "$(curl -qfsSL "https://api.github.com/repos/pwnwriter/haylxon/releases/latest" \
  | jq -r '.assets[].browser_download_url' \
  | grep -Ei "$(uname -m).*$(uname -s).*musl" \
  | grep -v "\.sha")" | tar -xzf - --strip-components=1 && ./hxn -h

Cargo

cargo install hxn
# or with binstall
cargo binstall hxn

Source

git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/pwnwriter/haylxon
cd haylxon && cargo build --release

Nix

nix run github:pwnwriter/haylxon
# or
nix profile install nixpkgs#haylxon

Arch Linux

paru -S haylxon-git

Termux

pkg install tur-repo -y && pkg install chromium -y
ln -s "$PREFIX/bin/chromium-browser" "$PREFIX/bin/chromium"

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Usage

Examples use brave — any Chromium-based browser works. Swap -b $(which brave) with your browser path.

Basic

# Single URL
hxn -b $(which brave) -u https://example.com

# From a file
hxn -b $(which brave) -f urls.txt

# From stdin
cat urls.txt | hxn -b $(which brave) --stdin

Remote browser

Connect to an already-running Chromium instance instead of launching one locally.

# On the remote machine
chromium --headless --remote-debugging-port=9223 --no-sandbox

# Chrome often ignores --remote-debugging-address=0.0.0.0, so expose it with socat
socat TCP-LISTEN:9223,fork,reuseaddr,bind=0.0.0.0 TCP:127.0.0.1:9223 &

# Auto-discover the WebSocket endpoint (recommended)
hxn --remote-host 192.168.1.42:9223 -f urls.txt

# Or pass the WebSocket URL directly
hxn --remote-url ws://192.168.1.42:9223/devtools/browser/<uuid> -u https://example.com

Tab pooling

Tabs are reused by default. Pages are reset between URLs instead of being created and destroyed each time.

# Custom pool size (default: 8)
hxn -b $(which brave) -f urls.txt --pool-size 16

# Disable tab reuse
hxn -b $(which brave) -f urls.txt --reuse-tabs false

Screenshots

# Fullpage
hxn -b $(which brave) -u https://example.com --fullpage

# JPEG format
hxn -b $(which brave) -u https://example.com --screenshot-type jpeg

# Custom viewport
hxn -b $(which brave) -u https://example.com -x 1920 -y 1080

Advanced

# Parallel tabs
hxn -b $(which brave) -f urls.txt --tabs 8

# With ports
hxn -b $(which brave) -f urls.txt --ports 8080,8081

# Proxy
hxn -b $(which brave) -u https://example.com --proxy socks5://127.0.0.1:9050

# Random user agent
hxn -b $(which brave) -f urls.txt --user-agent "random"

# Run JavaScript before screenshot
hxn -b $(which brave) -u https://example.com --javascript "document.querySelector('.banner')?.remove()"

# NDJSON output
hxn -b $(which brave) -f urls.txt --json

# Silent mode
hxn -b $(which brave) -f urls.txt --silent

# Timeout and delay
hxn -b $(which brave) -f urls.txt --timeout 200 --delay 5

# Accept invalid certs
hxn -b $(which brave) -f urls.txt --accept-invalid-certs

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Benchmarking

Comparison with gowitness on GitHub Actions (ubuntu-latest), measured with hyperfine. Full run.

Benchmark	hxn	gowitness	Result
Single URL	360ms	3.99s	hxn 11x faster
5 URLs, 4 tabs	1.81s	26.29s	hxn 14x faster
5 URLs, 8 tabs	1.70s	14.67s	hxn 8x faster

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Contributing

Contributions welcome via issues or pull requests.

Also see

• gowitness — web screenshot utility in Go
• Kanha — web-app pentesting suite in Rust

License

MIT

Copyright © 2023 - present pwnwriter