Modern browsers, not only Chrome, is aware that it is being controlled by some automated software, not by human. The following screenshot proves that awareness.
I remember that Chrome started displaying “being controlled by automated software” as of mid 2018 when the W3C WebDriver specification got approved and all browsers conformed to it. See
It is also suggested that user agents make an effort to visually distinguish a user agent session that is under control of WebDriver from those used for normal browsing sessions. This can be done through a browser chrome element such as a “door hanger”, colorful decoration of the OS window, or some widget element that is prevalent in the window so that it easy to identify automation windows.
I suppose that, since that change, browsers allow users’ JavaScript to refer to the “automation enabled” status if it wants to.
Angularjs Ver 1.6.x was popular in 2017 and early 2018. I guess, Angular 1.6.x didn’t know the automation-enabled status, but newer version of Angular like v1.8.x must be aware of the “automation-enable” status. But I am not sure what’s going on for you as I can not reproduce your case on my PC.
By the way, the following discussion may be interesting for you.
You can turn off “enable-automation” flag in Chrome by setting an option. This may stop the undesirable whitespaces in your page.