Start mobile browsers with webkit remote debugging ON

Question

At Google I/O 2011: Chrome Dev Tools Reloaded, Paul Irish and Pavel Feldman introduced new remote debugging feature — which was in passing included into webkit.

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Answer 1

Nathan de Vries figured out how to do this on iOS5 running in the simulator. It revolves around calling the private _enableRemoteInspector method.

Read it. Summary follows:

To enable this for Mobile Safari, attach to it with gdb and call the method:

MobileSafari_PID=$(ps x | grep "MobileSafari" | grep -v grep | awk '{ print $1 }')

if [ "$MobileSafari_PID" == "" ]; then
  echo "Mobile Safari.app must be running in the Simulator to enable the remote inspector."
else

  cat < /dev/null
  attach $MobileSafari_PID
  p (void *)[WebView _enableRemoteInspector]
  detach
EOM

fi

Then access the inspector at http://localhost:9999/.

With an embedded UIWebView, enable it like this:

- (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions {
  // ...Snipped...
  [NSClassFromString(@"WebView") _enableRemoteInspector];
  // ...Snipped...
}

On a real device it doesn't work, probably because the port is firewalled - if you have a jailbroken device you may get around that (update us if you do).