diff --git a/fastcore/net.py b/fastcore/net.py
index 90ebb184..05178376 100644
--- a/fastcore/net.py
+++ b/fastcore/net.py
@@ -74,9 +74,9 @@ class HTTP5xxServerError(HTTPError):
     pass
 
 # %% ../nbs/03b_net.ipynb #128b5f4a
-def urlopener():
+def urlopener(headers=None):
     _opener = urllib.request.build_opener()
-    _opener.addheaders = list(url_default_headers.items())
+    if headers: _opener.addheaders = list(headers.items())
     return _opener
 
 # %% ../nbs/03b_net.ipynb #e0470139
@@ -108,7 +108,7 @@ def urlopen(url, data=None, headers=None, timeout=None, **kwargs):
     if data is not None:
         if not isinstance(data, (str,bytes)): data = urlencode(data)
         if not isinstance(data, bytes): data = data.encode('ascii')
-    try: return urlopener().open(urlwrap(url, data=data, headers=headers), timeout=timeout)
+    try: return urlopener(headers=headers).open(urlwrap(url, data=data, headers=headers), timeout=timeout)
     except HTTPError as e: 
         e.msg += f"\n====Error Body====\n{e.read().decode(errors='ignore')}"
         raise
diff --git a/nbs/03b_net.ipynb b/nbs/03b_net.ipynb
index 6595404a..7b6ee900 100644
--- a/nbs/03b_net.ipynb
+++ b/nbs/03b_net.ipynb
@@ -270,12 +270,87 @@
    "outputs": [],
    "source": [
     "#| export\n",
-    "def urlopener():\n",
+    "def urlopener(headers=None):\n",
     "    _opener = urllib.request.build_opener()\n",
-    "    _opener.addheaders = list(url_default_headers.items())\n",
+    "    if headers: _opener.addheaders = list(headers.items())\n",
     "    return _opener"
    ]
   },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "code",
+   "execution_count": null,
+   "id": "861c12fc",
+   "metadata": {},
+   "outputs": [
+    {
+     "name": "stdout",
+     "output_type": "stream",
+     "text": [
+      "{\n",
+      "  \"headers\": {\n",
+      "    \"Accept\": \"text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/avif,image/webp,image/apng,*/*;q=0.8,application/signed-exchange;v=b3;q=0.9\", \n",
+      "    \"Accept-Encoding\": \"identity\", \n",
+      "    \"Accept-Language\": \"en-US,en;q=0.9\", \n",
+      "    \"Cache-Control\": \"max-age=0\", \n",
+      "    \"Host\": \"httpbin.org\", \n",
+      "    \"Sec-Fetch-Dest\": \"document\", \n",
+      "    \"Sec-Fetch-Mode\": \"navigate\", \n",
+      "    \"Sec-Fetch-Site\": \"none\", \n",
+      "    \"Sec-Fetch-User\": \"?1\", \n",
+      "    \"Upgrade-Insecure-Requests\": \"1\", \n",
+      "    \"User-Agent\": \"Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/87.0.4280.88 Safari/537.36\", \n",
+      "    \"X-Amzn-Trace-Id\": \"Root=1-6986dd0b-0561cf30030f998a5282e86d\", \n",
+      "    \"X-Custom-Header\": \"should-appear\"\n",
+      "  }\n",
+      "}\n",
+      "\n"
+     ]
+    }
+   ],
+   "source": [
+    "# Validate if the custom headers are applied to requests\n",
+    "from fastcore.net import urlread\n",
+    "\n",
+    "url = \"https://httpbin.org/headers\"\n",
+    "headers = {\"X-Custom-Header\": \"should-appear\"}\n",
+    "\n",
+    "resp = urlread(url, headers=headers)\n",
+    "print(resp)  # X-Custom-Header missing from response (only defaults applied)"
+   ]
+  },
+  {
+   "cell_type": "code",
+   "execution_count": null,
+   "id": "55d23fbf",
+   "metadata": {},
+   "outputs": [
+    {
+     "name": "stdout",
+     "output_type": "stream",
+     "text": [
+      "{\n",
+      "  \"headers\": {\n",
+      "    \"Accept-Encoding\": \"identity\", \n",
+      "    \"Host\": \"httpbin.org\", \n",
+      "    \"X-Amzn-Trace-Id\": \"Root=1-6986dd24-658093293c3ca5741a3ae92c\", \n",
+      "    \"X-Custom-Header\": \"should-appear\"\n",
+      "  }\n",
+      "}\n",
+      "\n"
+     ]
+    }
+   ],
+   "source": [
+    "# Validate if the custom headers are applied to requests\n",
+    "from fastcore.net import urlread\n",
+    "\n",
+    "url = \"https://httpbin.org/headers\"\n",
+    "headers = {\"X-Custom-Header\": \"should-appear\"}\n",
+    "\n",
+    "resp = urlread(url, headers=headers)\n",
+    "print(resp)  # X-Custom-Header missing from response (only defaults applied)"
+   ]
+  },
   {
    "cell_type": "code",
    "execution_count": null,
@@ -328,7 +403,7 @@
     "    if data is not None:\n",
     "        if not isinstance(data, (str,bytes)): data = urlencode(data)\n",
     "        if not isinstance(data, bytes): data = data.encode('ascii')\n",
-    "    try: return urlopener().open(urlwrap(url, data=data, headers=headers), timeout=timeout)\n",
+    "    try: return urlopener(headers=headers).open(urlwrap(url, data=data, headers=headers), timeout=timeout)\n",
     "    except HTTPError as e: \n",
     "        e.msg += f\"\\n====Error Body====\\n{e.read().decode(errors='ignore')}\"\n",
     "        raise"
@@ -850,9 +925,13 @@
    "split_at_heading": true
   },
   "kernelspec": {
-   "display_name": "python3",
+   "display_name": "fastcore-dev",
    "language": "python",
    "name": "python3"
+  },
+  "language_info": {
+   "name": "python",
+   "version": "3.12.3"
   }
  },
  "nbformat": 4,