Open gui after launching headless instance

g-ortega-solis · June 14, 2023

Hi,
Is there any way of opening a window of Zotero after launching a headless instance?

Use case:
- I am using a low-spec machine.
- I would like to launch Zotero in headless mode (zotero --headless).
- After collecting references, working on a paper or whatever, I would like to open a Zotero window that communicates with the Zotero instance already running in the background. The current situation is that I have to quit the headless instance and open Zotero again.

I'm using Ubuntu and Manjaro.

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

dstillman · June 15, 2023

We don't support a headless mode (beyond closing the main window on macOS, which works like other Mac programs). Just because something is a Firefox flag doesn't mean you should expect it to work in Zotero.

g-ortega-solis · June 15, 2023

Thanks for your reply.

Anyway, it would be great if anybody comments on a workaround. After all, the headless flag exists independently of whether it is supported or not.

emilianoeheyns · June 18, 2023

A workaround for what? If you want to start zotero without the UI showing, you can do that with xvfb, but that isn't really headless mode from the perspective of Zotero, and there's no way to use another zotero to drive the xvfb-running zotero. Zotero's desktop client does not have a client-server architecture. I know there's a VNC equivalent for xvfb that allows you to use a VNC client to connect to the running desktop. That comes closest to what you describe I think. edit: this should get you started: https://github.com/0ranki/headless_vnc

By "not supported" Dan doesn't mean "we know it works but we won't offer help", he means "we know Firefox has a headless mode, but even though zotero is based on Firefox, Zotero does not".