New features and major changes coming to Chrome DevTools in Chrome 71 include:
- Hover over a Live Expression to highlight a DOM node
- Store DOM nodes as global variables
- Initiator and priority information now in HAR imports and exports
- Access the Command Menu from the Main Menu
- Picture-in-Picture breakpoints
- (Bonus Tip) Run monitorEvents() in the Console to watch an element's events fire
Read on, or watch the video version of this page:
Hover over a Live Expression to highlight a DOM node
When a Live Expression evaluates to a DOM node, hover over the Live Expression result to highlight that node in the viewport.

Store DOM nodes as global variables
To store a DOM node as a global variable, run an expression in the Console that evaluates to a node, right-click the result, and then select Store as global variable.

Or, right-click the node in the DOM Tree and select Store as global variable.

Initiator and priority information now in HAR imports and exports
If you'd like to diagnose network logs with colleagues, you can export the network requests to a HAR file.

To import the file back into the Network panel, just drag and drop it.
When you export a HAR file, DevTools now includes initiator and priority information in the HAR file. When you import HAR files back into DevTools, the Initiator and Priority columns are now populated.
The _initiator
field provides more context around what caused the resource to be requested.
This maps to the Initiator column in the Requests table.

You can also hold Shift and hover over a request to view its initiator and dependencies.

The _priority
field states what priority level the browser assigned to the resource. This maps to the
Priority column in the Requests table, which is hidden by default.

Right-click the header of the Requests table and select Priority to show the Priority column.

Access the Command Menu from the Main Menu
Use the Command Menu for a fast way to access DevTools panels, tabs, and features.

You can now open the Command Menu from the Main Menu. Click the Main Menu
button and select Run command.

Picture-in-Picture breakpoints
Picture-in-Picture is a new experimental API that enables a page to create a floating video window over the desktop.
Enable the enterpictureinpicture
, leavepictureinpicture
, and resize
checkboxes in the
Event Listener Breakpoints pane to pause whenever one of these picture-in-picture events
fires. DevTools pauses on the first line of the handler.

(Bonus Tip) Run monitorEvents() in the Console to watch an element's events fire
Suppose you want to add a red border around a button after focusing it and pressing R
, E
, D
,
but you don't know what events to add listeners to. Use monitorEvents()
to log
all of the element's events to the Console.
Get a reference to the node.
Figure 17. Using Store as global variable to get a reference to the node Pass the node as the first argument to
monitorEvents()
.Figure 18. Passing the node to monitorEvents()
Interact with the node. DevTools logs all of the node's events to the Console.
Figure 19. The node's events in the Console
Call unmonitorEvents()
to stop logging events to the Console.
unmonitorEvents(temp1);
Pass an array as the second argument to monitorEvents()
if you only want to monitor certain events or
types of events:
monitorEvents(temp1, ['mouse', 'focus']);
The mouse
type tells DevTools to log all mouse-related events, such as mousedown
and click
.
Other supported types are key
, touch
, and control
.
Check out Command Line Reference for other handy functions that you can call from the Console.
Feedback
To discuss the new features and changes in this post, or anything else related to DevTools:
- File bug reports at Chromium Bugs.
- Discuss features and changes on the Mailing List. Please don't use the mailing list for support questions. Use Stack Overflow, instead.
- Get help on how to use DevTools on Stack Overflow. Please don't file bugs on Stack Overflow. Use Chromium Bugs, instead.
- Tweet us at @ChromeDevTools.
- File bugs on this doc in the Web Fundamentals repository.
Consider Canary
If you're on Mac or Windows, consider using Chrome Canary as your default development browser. Canary gives you access to the latest DevTools features.
Discover other DevTools features
Below is a list of everything that's been covered in the What's New In DevTools series.
Chrome 80
- Support for
let
andclass
redeclarations in the Console - Improved WebAssembly debugging
- Request Initiator Chains in the Initiator tab
- Highlight the selected network request in the Overview
- URL and path columns in the Network panel
- Updated User-Agent strings
- New Audits panel configuration UI
- Per-function or per-block code coverage modes
- Code coverage must now be initiated by a page reload
Chrome 79
- Debug why a cookie was blocked
- View cookie values
- Simulate different prefers-color-scheme and prefers-reduced-motion preferences
- Code coverage updates
- Debug why a network resource was requested
- Console and Sources panels respect indentation preferences again
- New shortcuts for cursor navigation
Chrome 78
- Multi-client support in the Audits panel
- Payment Handler debugging
- Lighthouse 5.2 in the Audits panel
- Largest Contentful Paint in the Performance panel
- File DevTools issues from the Main Menu
Chrome 77
- Copy element styles
- Visualize layout shifts
- Lighthouse 5.1 in the Audits panel
- OS theme syncing
- Keyboard shortcut for opening the Breakpoint Editor
- Prefetch cache in the Network panel
- Private properties when viewing objects
- Notifications and push messages in the Application panel
Chrome 76
- Autocomplete with CSS values
- A new UI for network settings
- WebSocket messages in HAR exports
- HAR import and export buttons
- Real-time memory usage
- Service worker registration port numbers
- Inspect Background Fetch and Background Sync events
- Puppeteer for Firefox
Chrome 75
- Meaningful presets when autocompleting CSS functions
- Clear site data from the Command Menu
- View all IndexedDB databases
- View a resource's uncompressed size on hover
- Inline breakpoints in the Breakpoints pane
- IndexedDB and Cache resource counts
- Setting for disabling the detailed Inspect tooltip
- Setting for toggling tab indentation in the Editor
Chrome 74
- Highlight all nodes affected by CSS property
- Lighthouse v4 in the Audits panel
- WebSocket binary message viewer
- Capture area screenshot in the Command Menu
- Service worker filters in the Network panel
- Performance panel updates
- Long tasks in Performance panel recordings
- First Paint in the Timing section
- Bonus tip: Shortcut for viewing RGB and HSL color codes (video)
Chrome 73
- Logpoints
- Detailed tooltips in Inspect Mode
- Export code coverage data
- Navigate the Console with a keyboard
- AAA contrast ratio line in the Color Picker
- Save custom geolocation overrides
- Code folding
- Frames tab renamed to Messages tab
- Bonus tip: Network panel filtering by property (video)
Chrome 72
- Visualize performance metrics in the Performance panel
- Highlight text nodes in the DOM Tree
- Copy the JS path to a DOM node
- Audits panel updates, including a new audit that detects JS libraries and new keywords for accessing the Audits panel from the Command Menu
- Bonus tip: Use Device Mode to inspect media queries (video)
Chrome 71
- Hover over a Live Expression result to highlight a DOM node
- Store DOM nodes as global variables
- Initiator and priority information now in HAR imports and exports
- Access the Command Menu from the Main Menu
- Picture-in-Picture breakpoints
- Bonus tip: Use
monitorEvents()
to log a node's fired events in the Console (video)
Chrome 70
- Live Expressions in the Console
- Highlight DOM nodes during Eager Evaluation
- Performance panel optimizations
- More reliable debugging
- Enable network throttling from the Command Menu
- Autocomplete Conditional Breakpoints
- Break on AudioContext events
- Debug Node.js apps with ndb
- Bonus tip: Measure real world user interactions with the User Timing API
Chrome 68
- Eager Evaluation
- Argument hints
- Function autocompletion
- ES2017 keywords
- Lighthouse 3.0 in the Audits panel
- BigInt support
- Adding property paths to the Watch pane
- "Show timestamps" moved to Settings
- Bonus tip: Lesser-known Console methods (video)
Chrome 67
- Search across all network headers
- CSS variable value previews
- Copy as fetch
- New audits, desktop configuration options, and viewing traces
- Stop infinite loops
- User Timing in the Performance tabs
- JavaScript VM instances clearly listed in the Memory panel
- Network tab renamed to Page tab
- Dark theme updates
- Certificate transparency information in the Security panel
- Site isolation features in the Performance panel
- Bonus tip: Layers panel + Animations Inspector (video)
Chrome 66
- Blackboxing in the Network panel
- Auto-adjust zooming in Device Mode
- Pretty-printing in the Preview and Response tabs
- Previewing HTML content in the Preview tab
- Local Overrides support for styles inside of HTML
- Bonus tip: Blackbox framework scripts to make Event Listener Breakpoints more useful
Chrome 65
- Local Overrides
- New accessibility tools
- The Changes tab
- New SEO and performance audits
- Multiple recordings in the Performance panel
- Reliable code stepping with workers in async code
- Bonus tip: Automate DevTools actions with Puppeteer (video)
Chrome 64
- Performance Monitor
- Console Sidebar
- Group similar Console messages
- Bonus tip: Toggle hover pseudo-class (video)
Chrome 63
- Multi-client remote debugging support
- Workspaces 2.0
- 4 new audits
- Simulate push notifications with custom data
- Trigger background sync events with custom tags
- Bonus tip: Event listener breakpoints (video)
Chrome 62
- Top-level await in the Console
- New screenshot workflows
- CSS Grid highlighting
- A new Console API for querying objects
- New Console filters
- HAR imports in the Network panel
- Previewable cache resources
- More predictable cache debugging
- Block-level code coverage
Chrome 61
- Mobile device throttling simulation
- View storage usage
- View when a service worker cached responses
- Enable the FPS meter from the Command Menu
- Set mousewheel behavior to zoom or scroll
- Debugging support for ES6 modules
Chrome 60
- New Audits panel
- 3rd-Party Badges
- A new gesture for Continue To Here
- Step into async
- More informative object previews in the Console
- More informative context selection in the Console
- Real-time updates in the Coverage tab
- Simpler network throttling options
- Async stacks on by default
Chrome 59
- CSS and JS code coverage
- Full-page screenshots
- Block requests
- Step over async await
- Unified Command Menu
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