Why Safari shows "No Inspectable Applications" during remote debugging with iOS 6 device?

Question

When I connect my iOS 6 device for remote debugging for testing my mobile web application, The safari develop menu with my device name shows "No Inspectable Applications".

I have enabled web inspector ON in my device safari device settings.

Why this is happening?

Solution 1

If you have private browsing enabled in Settings > Safari, you will not be able to use remote debugging. If you turned off private browsing, it will work like a charm.

Solution 2

An update for iOS 9 (using OSX El Capitan):

On your mobile device under Settings -> Safari -> Fraudulent Website Warning = OFF [default = ON]

I also needed to re-connect the iPhone after changing this setting

This solved it for me.

Solution 3

I recently had problems debugging a UIWebView in desktop Safari – and it turns out the problem was with my Xcode configuration for the app. The most recent build had been provisioned for production, rather than for Testing. After re-building the app for Testing, it showed up once more in the Safari Debug menu :-)

Solution 4

I had the same issue eventually I understand that the problem is with the Xcode settings.

To solve this issue:

Enable Safari Debug

First of all verify that on the device you have enabled the Safari debugger (on the device go to: Settings >> Safari >> Advanced >> Enable Debug; or iOS 9+ turn on: Settings >> Safari >> Advanced >> Web Inspector). If you've done this you will see your device in Safari >> Develop. if you see your device but you don't see your application under it, instead "no inspectable application", check your Xcode settings.

Xcode

1. Change Build Configuration:

Right click on the project name (under the play/run button) and select 'Edit Schema...', in the 'Edit Schema' window under 'Run' tab change the 'Build Configuration' to 'Debug' (instead of 'Release')

2. Change the Code Signing:

Click on the project name in the files tree, to display the project settings. Select the 'Build Settings' tab. Change the 'Provision Profile' to 'Automatic'. Change the 'Code Sign Identity' to 'iOS Developer'.

Note that changing the code signing will prevent you from release versions for production, however you will be able to debug your application.

Solution 5

A few things to try:

1. On your iPhone/iPad, double-tap the Home button to bring up the list of running apps, close Safari (or appropriate Web App), then reopen

2. Quit/reopen Safari on the Mac

3. Unplug/plug back in iOS device

As a side note, I can attach to Safari with private browsing enabled on the iOS device.

View more solutions

Comments

[derrylwc]

Any other reasons why it might not work? I'm convinced that this feature became slightly broken in a recent Safari (desktop) update. I can see Safari views, but not UIWebViews within another application

[Easwaramoorthy K]

@derrylwc Do you mean that you could not able to debug the UIWebViews in the application using Safari developer options in Mac because of recent update?...

[Bill Keller]

I found that in Safari Settings on the iPhone I also needed to Clear History, and Clear Cookies and Data.

[Liam]

For me, I had to update to the latest version of Safari (7.1) in order to debug Safari on my iPad running iOS 8.

[Graeme]

Thanks @Liam, I had to update to Safari 7.1 on my Mac as well. However I first needed to enable the "Debug" menu in the App Store, because Safari 7.1 is pre-release. I found this setting: defaults write com.apple.appstore ShowDebugMenu -bool true from here.

[auco]

I can second these observations. Sometimes the USB cable and port are also factors. Sometimes it started working after just waiting a while. Weird.

[Durai Amuthan.H]

can we do remote debugging on apps that are released via OTA(release not debug) ?

[Durai Amuthan.H]

@Dunc - Just now I read somewhere that apps that has provisioning profile other than developer such as adhoc and distribution can not remote debugging using safari....

[Dunc]

@Durai I can debug a live app downloaded from the app store (so distribution profile). It's one of our own apps, so maybe something to do with my particular Mac/iPhone certificates. I suggest you try yourself.

[Durai Amuthan.H]

@Dunc - Thanks for updating me this info.

[KIR]

I also needed to re-connect the iPhone after changing this setting. Thanks a lot!

[james246]

I couldn't find the setting mentioned in this post (iOS 9), but disabling "Do not track" seemed to fix things

[neeta]

In my case I killed safari on my Mac and restarted again that did the trick.

[sTx]

this was my problem, I was trying to debug a production app made with ionic2. What I did was: 1.ionic build ios, 2. connect de ipad to pc then in Xcode I've selected the device; 3. Develop>Run

[SeanMC]

This answer helped me realize my problem was that I was trying to debug a TestFlight build -which won't work. It needs to be a Debug build -which for me was by connecting my device and pressing the Play button for it in Xcode

[Geoff Davids]

Had to do it twice, but this finally seems to have put the problem to sleep for the moment. I also turned on the allow automation setting, don't know if that helped or not.