Hello everyone,
Is there any way for debugging an Android hybrid app with the dev tools, such as the inspect feature in Chrome?
What kind of hybrid app? An app built with the regular Android (Chrome-based) WebView? An app built with Mozilla’s in-development GeckoView?
If you mean the regular Android (Chrome-based) WebView, then no, we don’t currently have a way to this. If you mean the upcoming GeckoView, yes, we’re planning a way to debug it from Firefox.
Thanks for the reply. I am referring to a Chrome webview app, not the Gecko one. Would it be hard to implement such feature?
Thanks
Luigi
Hi Luigi,
tl;dr: it is currently not possible, but browsers are coordinating to make that experience easier in the future.
I understand the struggle of switching browsers & devtools when jumping between local and device debugging. Full-featured remote debugging is not an easy feature as protocols are not standardized and are moving targets for anybody trying to work against them from outside the team that owns them.
Good news is that browsers just started to coordinate on devtools protocols; which you can see bearing fruit in Edge’s EDP announcement and VSCode’s remote debugging capabilities – both targetting the limited surface of JS debugging (vs DOM inspection, console, network, etc).
It is something that Firefox is interested in – but we will need to pick one small target to aim for initially. What might be interesting for you meanwhile, as @jryans mentioned, is considering GeckoView as webview. What would convince you or keep you from switching? Having your feedback on the experience could help inform the team’s roadmap.
Hi Harald,
Thanks for the detailed reply! I would like to switch to GeckoView, but I’m forced to use a Cordova app that is based on the standard WebView.
Thanks again
Luigi