162 DevTools Tips
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Visualize the effect of CSS transforms
CSS transforms can sometimes be hard to wrap your head around, especially when chaining multiple transformations. Firefox helps with a cool visualization tool that allows you to see how and where the... Read moreCategories: Supported by: -
Copy a CSS rule as CSS-in-JS format
Do you use a CSS-in-JS framework? If so, you know how frustrating it can be to copy CSS from DevTools and paste it into your code. Indeed if the CSS you worked on in the Styles panel looks like this:... Read more -
Scroll an element into view
If the inspected web page is long with a lot of elements, and its DOM tree is big and complex, it's easy to get lost, not knowing where the selected element is in the page. DevTools has got your back... Read more -
Take screenshots of your site in a device frame
Taking a photo of a mobile device or tablet is daunting as you have to deal with fingerprints, glare and focus issues. Using Device Emulation makes this a lot easier. To take a screenshot of a web pa... Read more -
Take a screenshot of a single node
In Firefox, Chrome, Polypane and Edge DevTools, you can screenshot a single node from the page. Go to the Elements panel (or Inspector panel in Firefox). Right-click on the node you want to screensho... Read more -
Automatically logging name and value in console.log()
Using the console of DevTools you can to log some information to debug your JavaScript. The common way to do that is to add a console.log() statement where you want to learn the value of a certain var... Read more -
Move panels to re-arrange them
Moving panels around the user interface can be very useful to make DevTools more unique to you and adapted to your needs. There are 2 ways that you can re-arrange panels in DevTools today: dragging th... Read more -
Format console messages
You can use special formatters in the console.log function to format logs just the way you want. Use %s to format a variable as a string. Use %d to format a variable as an integer. Use %f to format a... Read more -
Simulate pseudo CSS classes
If you use :hover, :active, or other pseudo-classes in your CSS code, it can be tedious to test them. For example, having to hover over an element which is styled with the :hover pseudo-class means th... Read more -
Zoom the DevTools UI to your liking
Do you find the UI of DevTools too small to comfortably work with? Because this UI is made of HTML and CSS, just like any other web pages, it can be zoomed in (or out) by the browser just like you can... Read more -
See the page in 3D
See your page in 3 dimensions to quickly find out how deeply nested it is, fix z-index stacking issues, and performance issues. In Edge Open the Command Menu by pressing ctrl+shift+P (or cmd+shift+P... Read more -
Cut down on console noise using live expressions
Using the Console of DevTools to log information that changes a lot is a bad idea. First of all, you flood it with information. Secondly, it can impact the performance of your product. And last but no... Read more -
Easily change CSS number values from the keyboard in increments of 0.1, 1, 10, 100
When playing with styling or layout code in DevTools, it's useful to be able to change widths, margins, and other CSS number values quickly. Manually entering new numbers works of course, but it gets... Read more -
Get contextual DevTools help
Edge has a feature called the DevTools Tooltips that gives you help about the different tools right inside of DevTools. There are several ways to enable it: Press ctrl+shift+H (or cmd+shift+H on mac)... Read moreCategories: Supported by: -
Find and export CSS changes
If you spent time changing CSS in DevTools, either in the Rules panel (in Firefox), or in the Sources or Styles panels (in Chrome or Edge), and you don't remember all of the changes you made, you can... Read more -
Use commands to do things faster
There is a command menu in Edge and Chrome that allows you to quickly access many different features of DevTools without having to navigate the UI. Press Ctrl+Shift+P on Windows or Linux (or Cmd+Shift... Read more -
Evaluate XPath to find elements in the page
DevTools supports 2 ways to evaluate XPath expressions to help you locate elements in the page. All browsers support those 2 ways: From the Elements (or Inspector) panel: Click anywhere in the panel... Read more -
Store a node as a variable to use it in the console
If you want to use a DOM node from the page in the console: Right-click the node in the Elements (or Inspector in Firefox). Click on Store as global variable (or Use in Console in Firefox). The Cons... Read more -
Console.log() for the web with logpoints
Using the console to log some information is a very common way to debug your JavaScript. But you can also log information in any web site using Logpoints in the sources panel. Here's how to do it: I... Read more -
Debug popups that appear on hover using JS
Have you ever been frustrated because you couldn't style a popup or tooltip that appeared on hover? If it uses JavaScript to get displayed, it's hard to style without modifying the code to make it sta... Read more -
Monitor all events dispatched on an element
You can use the monitorEvents global function in the Console panel to log all of the events dispatched on a particular element. Select an element in the Elements panel. Go to the Console. Type monito... Read more -
Edit CSS shadow visually
If you don't remember the CSS syntax for the box-shadow property (and who does!), then Chrome and Edge can help you with their visual shadow editor! Select an element that has some shadow applied. Go... Read more -
Hide resources loaded by extensions in the Network panel
If you want to hide scripts and other resources loaded by browser extensions in the Network panel, use the -scheme:chrome-extension pattern in the filter input box. Credits go to Sunil for his post on... Read more -
Jump from a CSS variable usage to where it is defined
CSS custom properties (also called variables) are very useful to avoid repeating values in CSS, like colors for example. You can define and use a custom property as shown below: rule-1 { --my-main-co... Read more -
Pause script execution when the DOM changes
If you want to know what JavaScript code removes, adds, or modifies a DOM element in the page, you can use DOM breakpoints in DevTools. You can choose to break on: Subtree modification: this pauses e... Read more