Web Inspector

The Web Inspector allows you to view the page source, live DOM hierarchy, script debugging, profiling and more!

Enabling Web Inspector

• Safari — Enable the Develop menu option in the Advanced preferences. Use the optional toolbar button, Develop menu or Inspect Element context menu to access the Web Inspector.

• Google Chrome — Enabled by default, use the Inspect Element context menu to access the Web Inspector.

• Any WebKit client — Find the application's bundle identifier. Enter the following command once in Terminal, inserting the bundle identifier, and relaunch the application in order to use the Web Inspector.

  defaults write «bundle-identifier-here» WebKitDeveloperExtras -bool true
  

Using the Web Inspector

The Web Inspector can be opened by right clicking anywhere on a web page and choosing Inspect Element. Once open, it highlights the node on the page as it is selected in the hierarchy. You can also search for nodes by node name, id and CSS class name.

One of the unique features of the inspector is the ability to root the DOM hierarchy by double clicking a node to dig deeper. This lets you easily manage large nested pages and only focus on a particular sub-tree with minimal indentation.

The Node pane shows the current node type and name, as well as any element attributes.

Under the Style pane we show all the CSS rules that apply to the focused node. These rules are listed in cascade order with overridden properties striked-out—letting you truly see how cascading stylesheets affect the page layout. All shorthand properties have a disclosure-triangle to show and hide the expanded properties created by the shorthand.

The Metrics pane provides a quick visual look at how margins, borders and padding affect the current node.

Various HTML and JavaScript properties, including length of text nodes, offsetWidth/Height, class names, and parent/sibling information are vieweable in the Properties pane.

See ​Safari User Guide for Web Developers for more details on other panels of the Web Inspector.

Hacking on the Web Inspector

Most of the Web Inspector's code is HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, so it's very easy to implement new features and fix bugs! Click here to see a ​list of Web Inspector bugs and feature requests.

Related Blog Posts

​Web Inspector Updates
​Building a Better JavaScript Profiler with WebKit
​Web Inspector Redesign
​Yet another one more thing… a new Web Inspector!
​Introducing the Web Inspector

Shortcut Keys

Safari

	Mac	Windows / Linux
Show Web Inspector	⌥⌘I	Ctrl-Alt-I
Show Error Console	⌥⌘C	Ctrl-Alt-C
Start Profiling Javascript	⌥⇧⌘P	Ctrl-Alt-P

Chrome & Chromium

	Mac	Windows / Linux
Show Web Inspector	⌥⌘I	Ctrl-Shift-I
Show Error Console	⌥⌘J	Ctrl-Shift-J

Web Inspector

	Mac	Windows / Linux
Next Panel	⌘]	Ctrl-]
Previous Panel	⌘[	Ctrl-[
Toggle Console	Esc	Esc
Focus Search Box	⌘F	Ctrl-F
Find Next	⌘G	Ctrl-G
Find Previous	⇧⌘G	Ctrl-Shift-G

Console

	Mac	Windows / Linux
Next Suggestion	Tab	Tab
Previous Suggestion	⇧Tab	Shift-Tab
Accept Suggestion	Right	Right
Previous Command / Line	Up	Up
Next Command / Line	Down	Down
Previous Command	⌃P
Next Command	⌃N
Clear History	⌘K or ⌃L	Ctrl-L
Execute	Return	Enter

Elements Panel

	Mac	Windows / Linux
Navigate	Up/Down	Up/Down
Expand/Collapse Node	Right/Left	Right/Left
Expand Node	Double-Click on tag	Double-Click on tag
Edit Attribute	Return or Double-Click on attribute	Enter or Double-Click on attribute

Styles Pane

	Mac	Windows / Linux
Edit Rule	Double-Click	Double-Click
Edit Next/Previous Property	Tab/⇧Tab	Tab/Shift-Tab
Insert New Property	Double-Click on whitespace	Double-Click on whitespace
Increment/Decrement Value	Up/Down	Up/Down
Increment/Decrement Value by 10	⇧Up/⇧Down	Shift-Up/Shift-Down
Increment/Decrement Value by 10	PageUp/PageDown	PageUp/PageDown
Increment/Decrement Value by 100	⇧PageUp/⇧PageDown	Shift-PageUp/Shift-PageDown
Increment/Decrement Value by 0.1	⌥Up/⌥Down	Alt-Up/Alt-Down

Debugger

	Mac	Windows / Linux
Select Next Call Frame	⌃.	Ctrl-.
Select Previous Call Frame	⌃,	Ctrl-,
Continue	F8 or ⌘/	F8 or Ctrl-/
Step Over	F10 or ⌘'	F10 or Ctrl-'
Step Into	F11 or ⌘;	F11 or Ctrl-;
Step Out	⇧F11 or ⇧⌘;	Shift-F11 or Ctrl-Shift-;
Evaluate Selection	⇧⌘E	Ctrl-Shift-E
Toggle Breakpoint Condition	Click on line number	Click on line number
Edit Breakpoint Condition	Right-Click on line number	Right-Click on line number

WEb INspector REmote experiment

In early 2010, an experiment was made to get Web Inspector to run in a plain old web page, debugging a remote web browsing session in another browser window.

A write-up is available here: ​weinre - WEb INspector REmote, and the relevant source and demo archives are attached to this page.