iPad is not showing in Develop menu on OSX Safari

Question

I need to debug an HTML app on ipad. I used to be able to connect ipad by USB cable to my mac and it would show in the \"Develop\" menu in Safari. I have two ipads now - one w

Answer 1

I experienced the same issue today with iOS 13 and Mac OS 10.14 (Mojave).

What fixed it for me was simply installing a required Update in MacOS.

However, it is not an update that is installed via system preferences but only via a dialog that appears when trying to connect the devices.

Unfortunately the dialog appeared behind all other windows and could not be tabbed to. Thus I did not see it at all until I closed all other windows.

Regarding the dialog itself - here some information from Apple support:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208831

Answer 2

If you already have enabled web inspector on your iOS device by following these steps and still it is not showing you can try just disabling and then again enable web Inspector in device's Safari browser.

iOS Device > Settings app > Safari > Advanced > Web Inspector

Answer 3

For me, the problem was the different OS versions between the iPad and the iMac. I updated the iPad with the latest OS (iOS 11.2.2 at the time of this writing), but the iMac was under El Capitan (10.11.6) macOS. Once I updated the iMac to High Sierra (10.13.2) everything worked correctly.

Answer 4

Using a genuine Apple lightning cable (instead of a fake one) solved my problem.

Answer 5

Additional go to:

Device Settings -> Safari -> Private Browsing = OFF

Answer 6

Another gotcha for the basket: If you've another OS running in a virtual machine that you've forgotten about then the iPad can end up connected to that and hence invisible to Safari on the Mac.