ipad safari see console

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How to Activate the iPhone Debug Console or Web Inspector

Use Safari's web developer tools to study problematic websites

• Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College
• Switching from Android

What to Know

• Activate Web Inspector on iOS: Go to Settings > Safari > Advanced and move the Web Inspector toggle switch to the On position.
• Use Web Inspector on macOS: Connect your iOS device to a Mac and choose the URL to inspect from the Develop menu.

If you run into a bug or another issue with a website on Safari mobile, use the Web Inspector tool to investigate. This article explains how to use the Safari console for iPhone to debug errors with the help of your Mac computer. Instructions apply to iPhones with iOS 14, iOS 12, or iOS 11, and well as Macs with macOS Big Sur (11.0), macOS Catalina (10.15), or macOS Mojave (10.14).

Activate Web Inspector on Your iPhone or Other iOS Device

The Web Inspector is disabled by default since most iPhone users have no use for it. However, if you're a developer or you're curious, you can activate it in a few short steps. Here's how:

Open the iPhone  Settings  menu.

On an iPhone with an early version of iOS, access the Debug Console through Settings > Safari > Developer > Debug Console . When Safari on the iPhone detects CSS, HTML, and JavaScript errors, details of each display in the debugger.

Scroll down and tap  Safari  to open the screen that contains everything related to the Safari web browser on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

Scroll to the bottom of the page and select Advanced .

Move the Web Inspector toggle switch to the On position.

Connect Your iOS Device to Safari on a Mac

To use the Web Inspector, connect your iPhone or another iOS device to a Mac that has the Safari web browser and enable the Develop menu .

With Safari open, select Safari from the menu bar and choose  Preferences .

Select the  Advanced  tab.

Select the Show Develop menu in menu bar check box and close the settings window.

From the Safari menu bar, select Develop and choose the name of your attached iOS device, then select the URL that appears under Safari to open the debug console for that site.

After you connect your device, use your Mac to inspect the website you want to debug and have it open in the Safari mobile browser.

What Is Web Inspector?

Web developers use Web Inspector to modify, debug, and optimize websites on Macs and iOS devices. With Web Inspector open, developers can inspect the resources on a web page. The Web Inspector window contains editable HTML and notes regarding the styles and layers of the web page in a separate panel.

Before iOS 6, the iPhone Safari web browser had a built-in Debug Console that developers used to find web page defects. Recent versions of iOS use Web Inspector instead.

With Safari 9 and OS X Mavericks (10.9), Apple introduced Responsive Design Mode in Web Inspector. Developers use this built-in simulator to preview how web pages scale to different screen sizes, resolutions, and orientations.

To set up Web Inspector on your iPad, open your iPad's Settings and select Safari > Advanced , then turn Web Inspector On . Connect the iPad to a Mac computer, then open Safari on the Mac and select Safari > Preferences > Advanced , then turn on Show Develop menu in menu bar .

You cannot just connect your iPhone to a Windows PC and start using Web Inspector through Chrome like you can with a Mac. Installing package manager software can provide you a sort of workaround, but it's not recommended unless you're familiar with the package management app you intend to use.

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Tips & Tricks

Troubleshooting, enable the safari debug console on iphone & ipad.

Safari for iOS includes an optional debug console to help web developers track down and resolve issues with webpages on iPhone and iPad.

Even better, with the latest versions of iOS it actually uses the same Web Inspector that Safari on desktop does too, meaning if you connect the iPhone or iPad to the computer you can use the Safari debugging tools directly with your iOS or iPadOS device

Older versions of iOS have this capability too, and while not as in inclusive as the desktop Safari debug and developer tools , it’s still useful and is easy to enable or disable on the iPhone and iPad.

Let’s learn how to enable this feature on both new and old versions of iOS, and learn what’s different between the versions as well.

How to Enable & Use Web Inspector in Safari for iPhone & iPad

On modern iOS and iPadOS versions, here’s how Safari web inspector works:

• Open Settings > Safari > Advanced then tap to enable “Web Inspector”
• Connect the iPhone or iPad to a Mac, then go to Safari and enable the developer menu if you haven’t done so by going to Safari > Preferences > Advanced > Show Develop menu bar
• Pull down the “Develop” menu bar and find the iPhone or iPad, and then open the web page you wish to debug
• Safari Web Inspector will open where you can debug and inspect web elements from the iOS or IPadOS device directly in Safari on the Mac

Now as you navigate on the iPhone or iPad you will find the Web Inspector in Safari on the Mac will update.

You can access the debug Console through the Console tab in the web inspector, and you can access the debugger through the Debugger tab. And of course the usual web inspector tools for elements, resources, network, etc, are available to use as well.

You can also use a View Source trick for iOS and iPadOS while you’re on the go, if needed too.

How to Enable Debug Console on Older iOS Versions

If you have an older version of iOS on an older iPhone or iPad, the whole debug experience is on the device and you don’t have the ability to connect it to Safari on a Mac. Nonetheless it’s still quite useful, here’s how it works:

• Launch “Settings” and tap on “Safari”
• Tap on “Advanced”
• Slide “Debug Console” to ON

Once enabled, tap on the Debug Console at the top of any Safari screen to see web page errors.

The default list shows all errors, but you can drill down to more specific HTML, JavaScript, and CSS errors by tapping them individually.

Another useful tool for mobile web developers is Firebug Lite for iOS , which utilizes a javascript bookmarklet to load a simpler version of the popular Firebug development tool. That functionality is probably most useful for the older iOS versions as well, since newer releases have new capabilities.

Do you use any web developer tools for iPhone or iPad? Share with us any tips, tricks, apps, or techniques in the comments below.

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out dated — no longer accurate

The topmost section is accurate for new iOS versions using Web Inspector, the lower portion is for older versions with Debug Console. Hope that helps!

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• Debugging Safari/Chrome on your iPhone/iPad/iOS device

In the world of modern web development, Web 2.0 (or is it 3.0?), with HTML5, CSS3, ES6, and frameworks and libraries up the wazoo, our web apps and sites always work seamlessly and flawlessly across all the browsers and devices… hahaha, I know…

The reality is, web development, as great and modern as it is, can have little caveats and nuances across the different browsers: Chrome, Safari, FireFox, Edge, and the Mac/Windows/Linux/iOS/Android versions of each. Thankfully, the big contenders like Netscape (those were the days) and Internet Explorer have finally been deprecated and are no longer expected to be supported in the wild. Even with the great modern web, we still have issues once in a while.

In my recent efforts in troubleshooting one small “nuance” between Chrome on Mac and Chrome and Safari on iOS (yes, all three were acting differently), I needed to debug my browser on my iPad and/or iPhone. 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.

All steps below are all running on my:

• MacBook Pro 16-inc, M1 Pro, running macOS Ventura 13.6
• iPad Air (4th) v15.3.1
• iPhone 14 Pro Max iOS v17.0.3

What are we debugging

Before we get started in debugging, we should cover what we’re debugging. In the following debugging methods, we can debug anything our browser can get to: netflix.com, google.com, or our public website. With CI/CD in place, I can make code changes and get them into my dev environment in under 5 minutes, and that suffices at times. I can then hit the site directly on my iPhone and debug as needed.

Sometimes, if I’m really diving into a granular issue and don’t want to wait, I like to use ngrok. Ngrok spins up a gateway from a public address to your local dev machine. This allows me to troubleshoot realtime on my mobile browser while writing the code on my laptop. It’s pretty slick and has saved me a lot of time. I can even share the ngrok address with my colleagues and they can access it on my local machine too! Another option would be to set up DNS for your iPhone to navigate to your laptop while on the same wifi network, and that’s not worth the effort in my book.

Debugging in Chrome on iOS

This is great quick way to check out your console messages without using your Mac.

• In Chrome on your iPad or iPhone, go to chrome://inspect and then press Start Logging .
• Now go do your thing in another tab, keeping this tab open.
• Come back anytime to see any and all console outputs!

See, no laptop/desktop needed, just do it on the mobile device.

This is as far as we can get with Chrome on iPhone/iPad. From my limited understanding, Chrome for iOS uses a WKWebView which gets difficult to actually attach to and debug. If the JavaScript console output isn’t enough, try Safari…

Debugging in Safari on iOS

This is a great method of debugging your iOS devices as it gives you the closest thing to actually debugging on your computer. With this method you can use the dev tools on your Mac to connect to your iOS Safari browser. It’s pretty sweet.

• On your Mac , open Safari, then go to Safari > Settings.
• Click Advanced and click Show Develop menu in menu bar at the bottom of the window. Close the window.
• On your iPad or iPhone , go to Settings > Safari > Advanced.
• Scroll to the bottom and enable Web Inspector .

For this next part, I recommend using a USB cable to attach your iOS device to your Mac. You might get away with doing this over Wifi, as I have in the past, but it’s not reliable .

• Connect your device to your Mac using a USB cable, or try the following over Wifi.
• On your Mac, in Safari, click the Develop menu.
• Near the top of the menu you should see your iPad or iPhone listed.
• Hover over your device in the menu and you’ll see Safari with each tab listed below. Click the one you want to debug.
• The Web Inspector should then appear, now debug it: Elements, Console, Sources, Network, all of it should work!

Good enough for now

Between these two techniques, I’ve been able to troubleshoot my issues quite successfully. 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.log s 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.

One other option, for a cost: inspect.dev

There’s a product called inspect.dev that boasts it can debug Safari, Webviews, and Chrome from macOS, Windows, and Linux. Learn more at https://inspect.dev/why . I have not tried them out, I don’t want to pay for something that should be free for developers (hence this blog post).

Let me know if you know other ways to debug your mobile browsers! Leave a comment below or let’s connect on Twitter .

‘Til next time, happy debugging!

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7 thoughts on “ Debugging Safari/Chrome on your iPhone/iPad/iOS device ”

You should also check out using x-code’s simulator. Safari Dev Tools can attach to the Safari session on the simulator and you’re off to the races!

Oh yea, i just found that and then forgot that… thanks I’ll check it out closer and share my findings!

Thanks for article. One small correction Chrome for iOS uses WKWebView.

Thanks for the fix! will update

• Pingback: [FIXED] The image is taking the original dimentions of it on the phone after deployment - Learn How to FIX your angular code

Thanks bro! I’ll follow yours steps, wish me luck.

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Coding on iPadOS: Browser Dev Tools with Inspect

If you’re a web developer who uses an iPad, you will eventually need access to a browser with developer tools. These tools should allow inspecting the DOM tree, changing an element’s HTML, and tweaking CSS rules. Such tasks are trivial on macOS, but the only way to inspect a web page rendered by Safari on iPadOS is to connect your iPad to a Mac.

Is that the end of the web developer tools story on iPad? Do we pack it up and go back to our Macs?

No! Inspect Browser is an iOS and iPadOS app that gives you a browser with developer tools. If you’re a web developer with an iPad, you absolutely need this app.

Few people seem to know about Inspect, so this post will take a breezy tour of its strengths and weaknesses.

Is the Inspect App Legit?

An app called “Inspect” should probably support inspecting HTML and CSS. Good news: Inspect lives up to its name and goes beyond the basics to provide a nice set of developer tools (this is no “Firebug Lite”).

As a web developer, I want to point to an element on a page and see these things:

• The element’s position in the DOM tree
• The markup used for the element
• The CSS rules applied to the element

I also want to interact with JavaScript running on the page.

Inspect can do all of this.

Inspecting HTML

Inspect gives you a modal browsing experience with a “Tap to Inspect Mode” toggle that, when activated, lets you tap on any visible element to reveal it in a representation of the DOM tree in the sidebar.

This functions the same way that developer tools in desktop browsers do. You can also tap items within the DOM tree to view the same details.

The sidebar is resizable, thankfully.

The sidebar can also be positioned to the right or the bottom of the screen.

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Modifying Markup With Live Preview

Once you inspect an element, you can edit its markup and preview the result live.

Web developers should be familiar with this behavior from other browsers – it’s a godsend sometimes!

Viewing CSS

The CSS tab allows viewing the element’s CSS rules. You can also edit CSS rules with live updates, similar to HTML markup.

Being able to tweak and adjust styles and markup with a live preview of the running page means that this tool allows doing frontend work on an iPad that simply wasn’t possible before Inspect. Buy this app!

Testing Responsive Layouts

Desktop browsers all include responsive layout tools now, and Inspect follows this trend. The app has a “Design” tab that lists different device size presets. Selecting one of these sets the viewport of the document to that size, e.g. an iPhone 8 Plus.

JavaScript Console

To debug JavaScript, use console.log() . If you log JavaScript objects this way, they will appear in the “Console” tab of the app as an interactive object representation.

Did You Just Say There Is No JavaScript Debugger?

There is no JavaScript debugger in Inspect. 50% of JavaScript developers should find this news completely uninteresting, while the other 50% will cry tears of blood.

I’m a debugger kind of guy, so this is the only weakness of the app that I’ve found.

Summary: I Love This App

As mentioned at the beginning of this review, Inspect is legit. I love this app because A) it works well and B) it’s one of several apps created by developers for developers to write and test code directly on an iPad. Nice work!

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Safari User Guide

• Get started
• Go to a website
• Bookmark webpages to revisit
• See your favorite websites
• Use tabs for webpages
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• Autofill credit card info
• View links from friends
• Keep a Reading List
• Hide ads when reading
• Translate a webpage
• Download items from the web
• Add passes to Wallet
• Save part or all of a webpage
• Print or create a PDF of a webpage
• Interact with text in a picture
• Change your homepage
• Customize a start page
• Create a profile
• Block pop-ups
• Make Safari your default web browser
• Hide your email address
• Manage cookies
• Clear your browsing history
• Browse privately
• Prevent cross-site tracking
• See who tried to track you
• Change Safari settings
• Keyboard and other shortcuts

Use the developer tools in the Develop menu in Safari on Mac

If you’re a web developer, the Safari Develop menu provides tools you can use to make sure your website works well with all standards-based web browsers.

If you don’t see the Develop menu in the menu bar , choose Safari > Settings, click Advanced, then select “Show features for web developers.”

Open Safari for me

Safari Web Inspector Guide

• Table of Contents
• Jump To…
• Download Sample Code

Retired Document

Important: This document no longer represents the most current version of Safari developer tools. Links to downloads and other resources may no longer be valid. For new documentation on Safari Web Inspector, please visit Safari Developer Help .

The Console

The console offers a way to inspect and debug your webpages. Think of it as the Terminal of your web content. The console has access to the DOM and JavaScript of the open page. Use the console as a tool to modify your web content via interactive commands and as a teaching aid to expand your knowledge of JavaScript. Because an object’s methods and properties autocomplete as you type, you can see all available functions that are valid in Safari.

For example, open the console and type $$(‘p’)[1] . ( $$ is shorthand for document.querySelectorAll —see more shorthand commands in Table 5-1 .) Because this paragraph is the second instance of the p element on this page ( [1] in a 0-based index), the node represents this paragraph. As you hover over the node, its position on the page is visibly highlighted. You can expand the node to see its contents, and even press Command-C to copy it to your clipboard.

Command-Line API

You can inspect HTML nodes and JavaScript objects in more detail by using the console commands listed in Table 5-1 . Type the command-line APIs interactively within the console.

If your scripts share the same function name as a Command-Line API function, the function in your scripts takes precedence.

The functions listed in Table 5-1 are regular JavaScript functions that are part of the Web Inspector environment. That means you can use them as you would any JavaScript function. For example, you can assign a chain of Console API commands to a variable to create a useful shorthand. Listing 5-1 shows how you can quickly see all event types attached to the selected node.

Listing 5-1   Find the events attached to this element

After defining this function, inspect the magnifying glass in the top-right corner of this webpage, and type evs() in the console. An array containing the string “click” is returned, because there is a click event listener attached to that element.

Of course, these functions shouldn’t be included in your website’s JavaScript files because they are not available in the browser environment. Only use these functions in the Web Inspector console. Console functions you can include in your scripts are described in Console API .

Console API

You can output messages to the console, add markers to the timeline, and control the debugger directly from your scripts by using the commands listed in Table 5-2 .

Copyright © 2018 Apple Inc. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Updated: 2018-02-07