Open a Browser Tab with DevTools Open by Default

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Using command line flags is a great way to subtly improve productivity. Whether saving yourself keystrokes or enabling specific features, it's very much worth knowing the application flags available to you.

To launch a new tab with DevTools in Chrome, you can use the --auto-open-devtools-for-tabs command line flag:

/Applications/Google\ Chrome\ Canary.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome\ Canary --auto-open-devtools-for-tabs https://davidwalsh.name

Having the DevTools console immediately launch when opening a new tab can be very helpful, if only to avoid needing to complete the keyboard shortcuts every time you launch a tab. If you're an uber-nerd like me, you're never not in developer mode!

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Discussion

  1. zakius

    having to use chromium would greatly overweight the tiny benefit of having dev-tools auto open effectively making everything much worse

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!