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I have built a progressive web app using Cordova/Ionic. I have been using dev-tools to troubleshoot and analyze my apps inner workings for the better part of 3 years now. In the last few weeks however, i think since Chrome updated to v70+, dev-tools can no longer properly connect and/or manage the app running on my external device (several different test phones).

I have 4 Android test phones, and the same or almost the same issues are happening with dev-tools when connected to each device.

  1. desktop keyboard and mouse do not work anymore - I can't use either to interact with the app on the phone anymore. As well, on some phones I can't use the element inspector (while on others that does work). But regardless of phone, I can't use the desktop mouse to click on app buttons in the web-view. Keyboard does not work on any of the devices either.

  2. Often, even the native buttons in the app (directly on the phone) won't work if dev-tools has been opened to look at the app. If they do work, you press the button and like 10-15 seconds later the app finally responds.

  3. When dev-tools is opened and connected to the device app, the response time of the apps is now extremely slow as well. Sometimes the app just crashes or I get messages saying "app not responding, wait or close?"

  4. If I disconnect the phones from the desktop, and/or don't run dev-tools on the app, the app works and responds just fine. Something specific to dev-tools is causing all these problems.

The different phones have versions 5.1, 6.1.1 and 7.1 running on them for testing purposes. Again, dev-tools worked just fine until a few weeks ago. I recall various small issues impacting performance and web-view rendering in dev-tools, and now all of the above is impacting my ability to troubleshoot and analyze my app (developing).

My environment:

Cordova CLI: 8.0.0
cordova-android: 7.1.1
Gulp version:  CLI version 3.9.1
Gulp local:
Ionic Version: 1.3.4
Ionic CLI Version: 1.7.14
Ionic App Lib Version: 0.7.0
OS: Windows 7 SP1
Node Version: v6.10.3

Chrome: Version 70.0.3538.102 (Official Build) (64-bit)

I can't be certain, but I think all these issues began with Chrome updated itself to v70.+ On a side note, my app uses the "webview-plus" plugin....its an older plugin that enables certain inspection features and UI rendering. I removed it to see if maybe it was conflicting with dev-tools, but all the same problems still persisted.

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  • what exactly do you mean with dev-tools? the feature i am aware of is remote debugging, which seems to work for me...
    – Stefan
    Commented Nov 13, 2018 at 17:47
  • 1
    @Stefan - Dev-Tools, Inspector, web-view, remote debugging...in this context, all the same thing: chrome://inspect/#devices - too often people use different names for the same thing.
    – rolinger
    Commented Nov 13, 2018 at 21:42
  • 1
    I have the same problem. Did you find a solution? There's no error documented on Ionic/Chrome...
    – pete
    Commented Nov 30, 2018 at 7:44
  • @pete - no, i haven't found a solution yet. However, it seems to have gotten a little bit better. I still can't interact with the app itself using the desktop keyboard and mouse (type in input fields, click on buttons), but the mouse does work for element inspection. To navigate my app I load it up in Inspector and then have to use the app for button clicks and field input.
    – rolinger
    Commented Dec 1, 2018 at 13:05

2 Answers 2

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I have the same issue, it worked fine some months ago, but it is now broken.

As a workaround, I tried to disable screencast, restart the app and then restart devtools and it worked!

toggle screencast

Hope this helps!

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4
  • without screen cast, how can you use the desktop keyboard/mouse to interact with the app?
    – rolinger
    Commented Dec 21, 2018 at 14:30
  • I can't. I just interact with the app directly on the phone. But at least, I can use breakpoints and Network tools.
    – moppag
    Commented Dec 22, 2018 at 20:21
  • This doesn't get things completely functional again, but certainly very helpful to hit breakpoints again. Thanks!
    – BRass
    Commented Dec 24, 2018 at 15:14
  • We programmers do lots of impressive things, but sometimes we can't achieve the easiest. Thank you, it was obvious but I didn't notice that button was there too
    – José Manuel Blasco
    Commented Nov 26, 2019 at 8:36
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Edit: It's fixed in the lastest version.

The real problem is the latest android webview. All the element selection and mouse click doesn't work in latest android webview.

So, uninstall the android webview from Google Play store.

Download the older android webview version around 60

install it via adb with -r flag

adb install -r "/path/to/apk/com.google.android.webview_60.0.3112.78.apk"

This is a workaround until it is fixed in the latest webview.

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  • 1
    Wow....this is a known issue? I can't find much on the subject at all. Can't believe Google would let a major bug like this go on for as long as it has. I started noticing problems in mid october before I actually created this stackoverflow thread.
    – rolinger
    Commented Jan 18, 2019 at 21:01
  • and thanks for the update and top on how to deal with it.
    – rolinger
    Commented Jan 18, 2019 at 21:01
  • the development was so frustrating, so i decided to file a bug.
    – Cadis
    Commented Jan 22, 2019 at 16:25
  • @Cadis Any news? Do they answered something?
    – pete
    Commented Jul 2, 2019 at 12:10
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    Here we are, 10 months after I created this topic, and the latest version of Chrome doesn't resolve the issue. On chrome 76 now. Wonder if they are ever going to fix it. so much easier just clicking/typing in the Developer Tools display of the app versus doing it directly in the app - esp for development.
    – rolinger
    Commented Aug 27, 2019 at 17:19

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