I want to test my website on Safari on my iPad. I only have another PC. Is there a way for me to do remote debugging like ADB (Android Debug Bridge) with mobile Chrome? I searched on StackOverflow, seems there is an Adobe Edge Inspect CC, but I don't know if this is a good choice.
Thanks!
Update October 2019
This solution doesn't work for IOS 12+ (resource 1, resource 2).
Updated and tested on 24/6/2017
Using Chrome on Windows 8 and more recent:
Download and install Node
Download and install ITunes and connect it to your Device. (A pop-up should shows to your iPad to get authorization)
. Be sure to allow web inspector in your iPad
Download and install the remote webkit adapter
Using Powershell (As administrator):
npm install remotedebug-ios-webkit-adapter -g
Execute the adapter:
Using Powershell (as administrator):
remotedebug_ios_webkit_adapter --port=9000
You should get a similar output:
C:\Windows\system32> remotedebug_ios_webkit_adapter --port=9000
remotedebug-ios-webkit-adapter is listening on port 9000
iosAdapter.getTargets
...
Open Chrome and go to the following link:
chrome://inspect/#devices
Click on configure next to "Discover network targets" and add the following:
localhost:9000
Make sure to have the web page you want debug open on safari, you should see it on chrome inspector page under Remote Target
Extra step for iOS 11 Thanks to #skaurus
See monkeythedev's answer for the easiest way to debug on a Windows 8+ machine with iOS 9+. I updated my blog post using information from that answer and other sources and also recorded a screenshare. The method below should still work for iOS 8 and down, if needed.
There is actually a pretty easy way to debug a website in Safari on iOS using Firefox on a Windows machine.
NOTE: Ryan wrote in the comments below that this may only work on iOS 8 and down. I am unable to confirm, but be aware.
I wrote a detailed blog post about this, but here are the highlights:
Install iTunes to get the "Apple Mobile Device Support" and "Apple Application Support" applications that come with it. (uninstall iTunes afterward, if you want)
Connect your iOS device via USB.
Enable web inspector on iOS (available on iOS 6 and later).
Open Safari on your iOS device and browse to a website.
Open Firefox on your Windows machine and press Shift + F8 to open WebIDE, which should include the necessary Valance add-on, if you use Firefox Developer Edition (any version) or Firefox 37 and later (any channel).
For some reason, I couldn't get it to connect to my iOS device until I downloaded the ios-webkit-debug-proxy-win32 program and ran it. It opens a blank Command Prompt, but after I went back to WebIDE after opening it, I disconnected, then reconnected, and I saw debug info for the website I had opened in Safari. You may not need to do this though, as another user just had to add an exception to their firewall then disconnect/reconnect, and it worked.
The debug info available isn't as exhaustive as Chrome Developer Tools (specifically no "Networking" tab), but it was enough for me to be able to view what was going on in the Console.
2018 Update:
Since the original post, the blog post is dead & Telerik App Builder is discontinued and no longer offered. Adding this update to inform readers in case they don't read the user comments that follow this answer post. As for the blog post, for those still interested, here's a web cached copy. Regarding the blog, I think the company that blog's from has since shut down.
When I get a chance, I'll see if I have a copy of the app builder saved so that I can post it online for those still interested in using it, along with another cached copy of the blog post maybe.
Original Answer
You can try option of using Telerik AppBuilder (Windows client) as a replacement on Windows for Safari debugger on Mac when remote debugging. There's a nice blog post about the steps to do it in link below. I'd rather not repost the info as there are also screenshots and it's a lot of text. But essentially, you install app, open it, connect device via USB, then you can find it in the app and open up the developer tools/debugger for it. For non-public websites, you'll have to open up port 80 with some firewall configs documented in the post.
http://blog.falafel.com/Blogs/josh-eastburn/2014/03/04/ios-web-inspector-on-windows-with-telerik-appbuilder
The tool requires a license or you can use the trial, which becomes a basic edition afterwards. I think the basic edition will still allow you to do the debugging. I'm going to try it out myself.
You can also try these iOS apps too, you can find them in the iTunes App store. They give you a built in developer tools feature (right on iOS no remote debug) that mobile Safari doesn't offer.
MIH Tool - basic edition
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mihtool/id584739126?ls=1&mt=8
HTTPWatch Basic
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/httpwatch-basic-http-sniffer/id658886056?mt=8
I gave them a try and they're at least better than the mobile Safari you get on iOS, unless one needs to target full mobile Safari compatibility. I'm guessing the pro/paid editions of those apps give you more/better features.
This question was more than 4 years ago, but I feel like it's worth to mention another option which is platform-independent which seems is not mentioned above:
VConsole
It's a JavaScript that you can inject into your page(s) which will overwrite all native console output and show it as an overlay on top of your page content, in a level of detail that is almost as good as Google Chrome's Developer Tools.
Runs well on iOS Safari, as well as on other mobile browsers - for as long as JavaScript is enabled in the browser.
How to install: https://www.npmjs.com/package/vconsole
You will need NPM tools to install it, but not actually required to use NPM to build your project. You can simply install VConsole somewhere in a separate folder, and just copy-paste vconsole.min.js from it.
Once you inject it into your page, will look like this:
<script type="text/javascript" src="vconsole.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript>let vc = new VConsole(); // this will initialize it.</script>
Visually is very appealing, you will see green button in lower-right corner of your page on your mobile/desktop browser, which will open console overlay.
Very neat!
Of course, it does not provide you with ability to select an element, see calculated css etc., but if you are looking for console output and some network report, this one is really easy to use.
October 2019
AFAIK, For recent IOS versions there is no overall solution for debugging IOS from a PC.
You can however use one of the following solutions:
Display console messages in the browser itself. As described here and in Sinisa's answer.
The "remotedebug-ios-webkit-adapter" doesn't work for debugging IOS 12+. It requires extra steps for IOS 11, and works for IOS 10 and perhaps older versions as well.
I use PrePros for CSS preprocessing and it has a built in server for mobile debugging and web inspector. But this is only good for local sites even still...
In my experience it is often not an issue with mobile Safari only but Safari in general. In these cases it can help to try the normal Safari (for Windows) and see if the bugs appear there. If so, it's much easier to debug something by this way.
2021 update:
The creator of RemoteDebug here. I've built a replacement for RemoteDebug called Inspect, which packages everything together in a pleasant experience and enables easy iOS web debugging from Windows, macOS, and Linux, with a few extra features like screencasting and wifi debugging.
http://inspect.dev
There are a couple of options I've come across for debugging on iOS. They're not full step-through debuggers, but they offer a JS error log, console and some inspection tools:
1. Eruda
By adding the following snippet to the top of your page:
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/eruda"></script>
<script>eruda.init();</script>
You get an interactive set of developer tools similar to those in Chrome and Firefox. Here's a screenshot:
Available at https://github.com/liriliri/eruda
2. MiniConsole
This one I developed myself when I had not discovered another suitable option. It has less features, but it does the main things - capture JS errors, and allow you to run commands to inspect variables and object on your page.
Here's a demo:
It's activated by just placing this script tag on your page:
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/SimonEast/MiniConsoleJS#main/console.js"></script>
Open source, GPL licence. Available at: https://github.com/SimonEast/MiniConsoleJS/
3. vConsole
Another similar option that I've not really tried. Available at https://www.npmjs.com/package/vconsole with a live demo at http://wechatfe.github.io/vconsole/demo.html.
I haven't tried this on a PC, but you should be able to go to http://[DEVICE_IP_ADDRESS]:9999 to debug.
Related
We have an iOS app that has a Watch Tutorial link to our website. We recently migrated our website and the page it points to is now showing a 404 error. We need to know what page the link points to so we can redirect it. Unfortunately in the app it just opens link to the page in the actual app and not in safari or any other browser so we can't see the website link.
Is there a way to "inspect" the link in our app like you can in a browser to see where it is pointed to? Maybe some debugging software that can pull the app down and let me look at it? Our app developers are unavailable right now and we want to get the app up and running correctly.
You can try with the Safari Web Inspector (Safari mac remotely debugging on an iPhone app/safari).
With this approach, you can inspect from you mac, any WebViews (or related) in actual apps.
Note : It won't work if you app make the request, but does not use web view to display the page.
See any tutorial on how to enable safari web inspector
Maybe some debugging software that can pull the app down and let me look at it?
You can use a web proxy such as Charles to easily see all the traffic going to and from the app:
Install the proxy software on your computer.
Set the device to proxy through your computer.
If needed, install SSL certificates that will let the proxy see the contents of TLS connections.
Fire up the proxy, launch the app, and watch the traffic.
As Apple announced Service Worker support for iOS 11.3 a few months ago, I recently started trying to get a service worker to work on iOS. On Safari it works as expected, after vising the website, it works offline. However, when trying to use the same feature in Chrome, I had intermittent results. Specifically, the service worker would only work every other page refresh, with the original refresh after going offline being one of the ones not working.
I know that Chrome on iOS is built on a version of Safari, therefore I am confused about this behavior.
Is this due to incomplete support from Chrome iOS for Service Workers? Because it is Chrome on iOS, I'm not sure of any easy way to debug it either, so any other tips to help track down the problem would be appreciated. Thank you!
Chrome for iOS do not support service workers currently(as of Apr-2020) and also the "Add to home screen" option is not available, if you are interested in that. Any offline page loading that you are experiencing should be from regular browser cache.
Here is an official documentation from Apple's web-kit page.
Update: A previous version of this post stated the Service Worker API
is available in all applications using WKWebView. At this time it is
only available in Safari, applications that use
SFSafariViewController, and web applications saved to your home
screen.
Notably, Chrome uses WKWebView as its browser engine in iOS, which don't have service worker support yet as per the above statement(which you can find in the link provided above). So the only way you can use Service worker in iOS is to use Safari browser or use one of the above supported web-views inside a native app.
Here is an article on what all PWA features iOS is still missing. Remember, this is a fast growing area. Always check if what is applicable now, especially if the documentation/article is getting older.
Here is an adapter to help debug in Chrome dev tools for pages loaded iOS - webkit/safari. Hope it becomes as easy as Android Chrome debugging one day!
Chrome for iOS is open source (https://blog.chromium.org/2017/01/open-sourcing-chrome-on-ios.html)
We can install the Chrome app with our developer signed certificate on an iOS device, launch the Chrome App, and start testing.
It is technically feasible.
As an update in January 2021: the official documentation from Apple's web-kit page still says the same thing, and I just battled a very difficult to debug issue in Chrome iOS - posting here in case it helps someone.
I had an iFrame containing a cross-origin Angular 10 PWA with Service Worker enabled, and the iFrame content would not show after an initial load - no errors, no server logs, just blank. The only solution that worked was to self-destruct the Service Worker per Angular's docs, and now the iFrame loads fine.
I can't seem to find an answer to this seemingly simple question. I have an app that i've built using the command line phonegap tools and when i start this app it opens up. i am using something called ios_sim (https://github.com/phonegap/ios-sim) which launches the app in the simulator and does not launch xCode (i don't quite understand why this is a feature, it seems like xCode has some useful tools)
Anyhow, my app is not functioning the same way that it does in the browser and i need to debug it. I have also already installed Charles to inspect the requests and i can verify that the correct data is coming from my API so my assumption is that there is some sort of javascript error in rendering the page (the page is partially rendered btw).
All i want to do is view the javascript errors. the same way that you would in the console if you were looking at a web page.
how do you do that?
You have to use Safari Remote Debugging with Web Inspector. See in the relating cordova docs how to do that!
So iOS6 is out, horrah. Now, it appears as though Apple have removed the 'Developer Console' that used to exist in Safari. Great, I hear a lot of people say - it was limited.
But, it works on the device - now apparently you have to connect the device to a Mac to get web inspector?
Is this the only way of debugging with console? Is there a way of debugging with windows, safari? Please note, I don't mean just changing user-agent, which you can do on Safari Windows - that doesn't register touch events - just click.
If you don't have Mac OSX you can use this script as console replacement:
https://github.com/robotnic/waterbug
It shows error message, it's possible to log all kind of variables, you have to turn your iPhone or iPad 90° to the right to open the console.
A poor mans debugging console:
try {
var test = document.do.something();
}
catch (exc) {
alert(exc);
}
One can debug on the device by using bookmarklets (especially within Mobile Safari).
Debugging on the device can be very important if an error only appears live on the device but nowhere else. There is a variety of bookmarklets for developer, so choose the tool of your choice (e.g. Firebug Lite), add it to your bookmarks and use it right where you need it.
This may not be the Developer Console, but it is a method to debug much more accurate and job-oriented.
I wrote a blogpost on how to use bookmarklets on my weblog (there is also a list of other common testing tools and further bookmarklets):
http://hofmannsven.com/2013/laboratory/ios-bookmarklets/
UPDATE: Chrome released its Mobile DevTools which will make debugging (within Google Chome Mobile, Android Devices only) much easier. This will not fix the missing DevTools issue within Safari, but it might help to locate errors on a device:
https://developer.chrome.com/devtools/docs/remote-debugging
http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/developertools/mobile/
UPDATE2: Mozilla released a Firefox add-on to enable web development across browsers and devices: http://youtu.be/kEFbQwB81RE?t=1m58s
Have a look for weinre. It allows you to inspect a page running in Safari from another computer using a Chrome-like web inspector
You can use window.onerror to debug errors without a console. Simply add this code to your HTML document in its own <script> tag before any other Javascript code:
<script type="text/javascript">
window.onerror = function(e){
alert(e);
};
</script>
This will do so that whenever there is an error, the error message will be shown in an alert dialog box, which is visible in iOS Safari. It's important that the above code runs before the error you're trying to debug, and if you're debugging a syntax error, it's also important that it's in a separate <script> tag.
Instead of Safari on Windows you could use an app by Telerik called AppBuilder. I've found the instructions on this blog. You'll need to get an account to use the Telerik Platform though.
This will give you dev tools like the ones in Safari. I've used it on Win7 64 bit with regular web apps and Phonegap apps running on an iPad with iOS 7.1.
Like neno suggested, Telerik AppBuilder is a great applications. I am actually running Windows XP in a virtual machine on Linux only for the purpose of debugging my iPhone. Windows XP because in my case Windows 7 does regognize the iPhone, but iTunes and Telerik AppBuilder don't.
Looks like the built in console is gone. I tried plugging into a Windows 7 and opened Safari and could not locate the developer console. Then I read this article which confirmed it.
If you need to be able to test your site in both orientations then waterbug is not a good option, because it uses up the landscape orientation for its console view.
One decent option is to use Adobe Edge Inspect. You open your site on Chrome and open the app on your device and your device will mirror whatever page you have open on your desktop. Then you can use the Chrome dev tools to debug your content.
I have created the app with forge, and have added in the chrome extension, but when i run with chrome, always show the following errors:
Currently it is not possible to launch a Chrome extension via this interface.
The required steps are:
1) Go to chrome:extensions in the Chrome browser
2) Make sure "developer mode" is on (top right corner)')
3) Use "Load unpacked extension" and browse to D:\mobile-app\test/development/chrome
but I really done with above steps, I don't know what happen.
and I want to know how can I use difference Android sdk and resolution simulator with testing?
thanks!
Chrome doesn't a way for us to automatically install browser extensions. Therefore, you have to install your extension manually.
To do that, in Chrome (see image below):
type chrome:extensions in the address bar
turn on developer mode
click Load unpacked extension
If you have a separate question about Android SDKs, probably best to ask that in a different thread, or contact support#trigger.io.
I had the same issue, using:
forge run chrome
to try to run the app in the Chrome web browser. I thought the 3 steps given were to install an extension which would then allow forge run chrome to launch the web application. I couldn't understand why, after installing the extension (with no button defined of course), nothing seemed to change. I didn't realise a Chrome extension version of my app, appearing on the toolbar, was even possible!
I should have used:
forge run web
to launch the app in the (default) browser.