Posted On: Nov 18, 2020

CloudWatch Synthetics now supports customizing the default launch settings on the Chrome browser with a new minor runtime version, syn-nodejs-2.1. This allows for more flexibility in the canary launched browser settings such as viewport, setting chromium flags, and handling errors. With syn-nodejs-2.1, you can also configure canary scripts to not take screenshots on a canary step, thereby reducing costs, and avoiding screenshots for sensitive data. 

Canaries are modular, lightweight scripts that you can configure to run on a schedule in order to monitor your endpoints and APIs from the outside-in. Canaries simulate the same actions as a user, which makes it possible for you to monitor your user experience continuously. For each canary run, Synthetics launches a headless chrome browser with Synthetics default settings. You can now use the new minor runtime version, syn-nodejs-2.1, to customize these default settings. For example, you can modify the default viewport from 1920x1080 to a different size. Another example is adding a chromium flag to set an SSL version, or removing a default flag such as disable popup blocking.  

This feature is available in the following Regions: US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (N. California), US West (Oregon), Africa (Cape Town), Asia Pacific (Hong Kong), Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Asia Pacific (Seoul), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Canada (Central), Europe (Frankfurt), Europe (Ireland), Europe (London), Europe (Milan), Europe (Paris), Europe (Stockholm), Middle East (Bahrain), South America (São Paulo), AWS GovCloud (US-East), and AWS GovCloud (US-West). 

To learn more about this feature, see the CloudWatch Synthetics documentation. For pricing, refer to Amazon CloudWatch pricing.