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We put together a list of the most frequently asked questions

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How do I debug my local site with Inspect?

iOS Web Inspector does not expose Android-style reverse port forwarding, so a physical device cannot transparently reach a server on your computer through http://localhost. Use a network-reachable HTTPS development URL or a secure tunnel such as ngrok. Inspect is researching an opt-in HTTP-only bridge, but it would not replace transparent forwarding for WebSockets, streaming responses, or arbitrary TCP services.

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Can Inspect emulate a different iOS viewport size?

No. WebKit compiles its screen-size override out on Apple platforms, so Inspect cannot change the real CSS viewport or media-query result of an iOS Safari or WebView target. Test with the intended simulator/device size, or use Safari’s Responsive Design Mode on macOS for approximate layout work.

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Can I edit source code while debugging?

CSS stylesheet, rule, and inline-style editing is supported. Live JavaScript editing is not: the iOS Web Inspector protocol has no equivalent of Chrome’s Debugger.setScriptSource. Inspect reports that limitation without claiming the script changed.

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Can Inspect throttle an iOS target’s network?

Not through Web Inspector. iOS does not enable WebKit’s inspector-level throttling primitive. For device-wide testing, use Apple’s Network Link Conditioner from the device’s Developer settings.

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Can Inspect debug SharedWorkers on iOS?

Not currently. WebKit does not expose a debuggable SharedWorker target or a working remote-inspector message channel. Inspect can add the target mapping only after WebKit exposes that channel.

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Windows Defender gives me a warning when opening Inspect?

Windows 10 gives a warning about Inspect because the Smart Scanner filter hasn’t seen more than 1000 users using Inspect before. Details in

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Proxy server support

Inspect is built with Electron, and has exactly the same proxy server support as Google Chromium. Here’s a snippet from Chromium’s documentation: “The Chromium network stack uses the system network settings so that users and administrators can control the network settings of all applications easily. The network settings include:
This means that your proxy settings should be picked up automatically. Otherwise, you can use the following command-line arguments to control your proxy settings:
To learn more about these command-line arguments, see Chromium Network Settings.