Is Android debugging still working?

Developer Tools
#1

I’m trying to inspect a page in my Android Emulator but when I click the “Inspect” button it will open completely empty page with nothing to click on.
Even though I can correctly connect to the Android, I see all the opened tabs with Inspect buttons. Also the blank page has a “good looking” URL:

about:devtools-toolbox?type=tab&id=6&remoteId=emulator-5554%7C%40org.mozilla.firefox_beta%2Ffirefox-debugger-socket-usb

It was working before, but some time ago it stopped working.

I’ve tried also with the web-ext tool to run my extension on Android but still I can’t inspect any page (including normal webpages).

I’ve tried Release and Beta versions on Android and I’ve tried to debug with Developer Edition and Nightly on desktop, but still doesn’t work.

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#2

Hi!

Yes, remote debugging should still work fine :slight_smile:

If you are trying to debug Firefox for Android on your emulator, be aware that it is based on Firefox ESR (v68), so you need to connect to it from Firefox Desktop ESR68.

You can download Firefox ESR at https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/#product-desktop-esr

Our backward compatibility policy only supports a gap of 2 versions. This means that Firefox for Android (aka Fennec) can only be debugged from: Firefox 68, Firefox 69 and Firefox 70. Since Firefox release channel is now Firefox 72, the only compatible release officially available is ESR68.

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Debugging an addon in Fenix Nightly
Is there any way to run an extension for debug on Android FireFox?
#3

I have just been reminded that Firefox 68 has by default an old version of about:debugging, which doesn’t support remote debugging.

In order to enable the new about:debugging on Firefox 68ESR, you need to go to about:config and set devtools.aboutdebugging.new-enabled to true.
Or you could use WebIDE, which should still be bundled in Firefox 68.

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#4

Thanks!
I was just about to ask you that!
I’ve just tested it and it works now :slight_smile:

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#5

Glad it works now, and thanks for updating us :slight_smile: