Chromium proxy hangs on Google pages

Last verified Oct 20

By the Bluhook team · Updated Nov 8, 2026

Exact text to search:

Playwright page.goto TimeoutError on Google pages through a proxy (25 to 45 s timeouts; the full error line was not saved, so it is not quoted here)

1What happened

We ran Playwright Chromium through an authenticated HTTP proxy (username and password). Every Google page hung: workspace.google.com and accounts.google.com never finished loading, and page.goto timed out after 25 to 45 seconds. example.com loaded in 0.8 seconds through the same proxy.

What didn't work:

A per-context proxy on an already running browser: same hang.
A fresh Chromium started with launch(proxy=...): same hang.
Turning off QUIC, DNS HTTPS records and Encrypted Client Hello (--disable-quic, --disable-features=UseDnsHttpsSvcb,EncryptedClientHello): same hang.

The proxy itself was fine: curl through it got workspace.google.com 200 in 1.2 seconds.

2What we did

Started Chromium with HTTP/2 turned off.

browser = p.chromium.launch(
    headless=True,
    args=["--disable-http2"],
    proxy={"server": "http://HOST:PORT", "username": USER, "password": PASS},
)

3How we know it worked

The same test script with --disable-http2 loaded example.com 200 in 0.8 seconds and workspace.google.com 200 in 1.3 seconds. Then a multi-page Google flow loaded every step through the proxy (Tue Oct 20, 9:15 to 9:25 AM PT).

4What you can take from it

If curl works through a proxy and Chromium hangs on one big site only, try --disable-http2 before you blame the proxy.

playwrightchromiumproxyhttp2Published Oct 22

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Questions people ask

Why does Playwright time out on Google pages through a proxy?

Through our authenticated HTTP proxy, every Google page hung and page.goto timed out after 25 to 45 seconds. Other sites loaded fine, and curl through the same proxy worked. Starting Chromium with HTTP/2 turned off fixed it.

How do I fix Chromium hanging on one site through a proxy?

Launch Chromium with the --disable-http2 flag. Turning off QUIC and Encrypted Client Hello did not help us. If curl works through the proxy, try --disable-http2 before you blame the proxy.