How to Inspect Element on iPhone: 4 Ways on Safari + Chrome

With this method you can use the dev tools on your Mac to connect to your iOS Safari browser. I won’t get into what the issue is here, instead, I’ll get into how we can debug the browsers on our iOS devices. I’ve searched for many options, some worked, some didn’t, so below is what worked for me.

  • This can hinder the testing and QAs might have to compromise with another handset.
  • Try LambdaTest mobile device cloud testing for free and quickly inspect and test web elements across 3000+ real iOS and Android devices.
  • However, it can be tricky to locate them, especially if you’re working with an app that doesn’t include developer tools or if you’re using a browser other than Chrome.
  • The reason is that when you are on a webpage with a lot of code, element inspection can help you locate specific elements.
  • One of the available solutions is Samsung Remote Test Lab, a free solution to test your PWA on Samsung devices, including phones, tablets, and foldable devices.

You can only install the Android SDK or Android Studio, a free IDE including the Android SDK with the emulators. With the SDK, you will have to use the command line to open and set up your emulators. With Android Studio, you can open the tools needed from the Welcome screen’s menu.

Chrome 73 for iOS adds built-in website debugging tool to view JavaScript logs

Additionally, a Mac with enough disk space to hold the code and tools is required. This barrier to debugging has led to bugs being filed for specific website failures on Chrome for iOS. Chrome 32+ for the desktop now has mobile device emulation, which is useful for debugging things via the console, such as touch events that don’t necessarily exist on the desktop. You will not be able to see highlighted elements from the devtools in the browser though. You will just need to deal with opening the DOM tree and finding the elements. Or use DOM queries in the JS console (document.querySelectorAll) and then right click on the results and click “Reveal In Elements Panel”.

ios chrome developer tools

Generally, iOS Safari and Chrome act relatively the same, so debugging in Safari helps me clear my Chrome issue. And if it doesn’t I can always throw in more console.logs and see what Chrome is actually doing. Ideally, we should be able to debug the code directly on Chrome, like we can do with Safari, but at this time it’s just not possible.

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However, given it is not feasible for all organizations to procure and maintain Apple devices on-premises, teams must leverage platforms like BrowserStack. Developer Tools are pre-installed in every Safari (on iOS) and Chrome (on Android) browser. There’s https://wizardsdev.com/en/vacancy/senior-ios-developer/ no need to acquire the right devices, plug in the USB, or modify any settings. Simply pick your preferred device—or switch devices—and debug instantly. Between these two techniques, I’ve been able to troubleshoot my issues quite successfully.

ios chrome developer tools

The following steps will guide you on how to inspect element on iPhone or iPad using LT Browser. By default, Xcode only installs the latest version of iOS, but you can go to Xcode, use the Preferences menu, and download older Simulators from the Components tab. Apple offers the Simulator app (formerly known as iOS Simulator) which allows you to test your web app on different iPhones and iPads on various operating system versions. To cross-check, one can simply open any URL in Safari and right-click the mouse button to check if the option is enabled. You can enable a performance overlay to help you debug performance problems by selecting “Perf Monitor” in the Dev Menu.

How do you inspect elements on iPhone?

It includes the real Mobile Safari app and the Web.app engine used when your PWA is installed on the home screen, so the final experience you see is fairly representative of an actual device. To access it, open the Chrome Developer tools from the More tools menu. Inside it you need to open the Remote devices view from the More tools menu. The view will list all attached Android devices and running emulator instances, each with its own list of active web views. However, this takes a non-trivial amount of effort which includes setting up a Chromium checkout, installing a current version of Xcode, and waiting for the build to complete.

ios chrome developer tools

The iOS and iPadOS beta programs sometimes include new versions of Safari that you can use for testing. Chromium browsers offer many tools for debugging and testing Progressive Web Apps, starting from DevTools. Emulating a different desktop computer is typically done via a virtual machine system, such as VirtualBox or VMWare. Simulator is not a virtual machine, but an app running on top of your macOS that looks like an iPhone or iPad, so it doesn’t have its own TCP stack. Therefore, if you use localhost within Simulator, Safari will point to your macOS localhost device. While sourcemaps may not be enabled by default, you can follow this guide or video to enable them and set break points at the right places in the source code.

LT Debug

It means out of 100 people, only 9 – 10 will be able to use this option and inspect elements on iPad/iPhone. If you have all the iPhone devices you are targeting for your application and fall in the above 9.5% category; you are lucky enough. But if you are one of 90 people, we have more flexible options ahead. The most convenient way to inspect elements on iOS devices is to utilize the inspect elements feature in the Safari browser on the desktop.

This can hinder the testing and QAs might have to compromise with another handset. Writing plugins is a great way to give back to the community by making application development ever easier by abstracting complex logic through a simple interface. What is even better is when your plugin can integrate almost seamlessly with the expanding arsenal of debugging tools provided by the platform. Following are the optional requirements and interfaces your plugin should comply to, to have your plugin’s components/data shown in the respective DevTools panels.

Here you can test applications on Mobile, Test and Web platforms. So, you will see how to inspect elements on the iPhone safari browser. If you don’t have a Mac or you want to sneak into a site directly via your iPhone If so, you’ll be happy to know there’s the iOS Shortcuts application that can do this. This article addresses this challenge by describing an intuitive yet effective method that will help individual testers or developers comprehensively debug iOS apps from web browsers.

ios chrome developer tools

If there’s something you can tap or swipe on your device, TestGrid will help you discover what it does. It makes the job of testing much easier as testers get the required test infrastructure and environments at their fingertips. With a powerful set of debugging tools and secured cloud infrastructure, teams can debug iOS apps on the desired set of devices directly through a web browser like Chrome, Safari, or Firefox. QAs often have to deal with certain bugs appearing for a specific iOS device or an iOS version. In such instances, the developer or QAs need those specific iOS handsets handy for instant testing and debugging to identify the root cause of the bug. In most scenarios, it is not feasible for teams to own diverse iOS handsets for the sake of debugging given the handsets are expensive.