Is there a better way to debug mobile keyboard/viewport related issues on PC?
Hi all!
Responsive pages are very nicely testable in Chrome and Firefox, but both don't seem to support an emulated (virtual) keyboard that pops up, which makes virtual keyboard / viewport related issues the most annoying ones to debug. Of course for those kinds of errors svh, dvh, etc. come to the rescue, but what makes it difficult is the inability to easily test it and play around with it.
Chrome's remote dev tools unfortunately aren't as reliable as I'd wish, and half the time I need to restart my browser, replug the phone, etc.
Are there other ways to test these dynamic viewport issues that don't rely on fiddling with an actual device?
(I'm on Windows, if that makes a difference.)
Thank you and cheers!
12 Replies
Probably using emulators (Eg; avd, genymotion)
Thank you, but this does sound even more cumbersome. I'd still have to connect Chrome's dev tools and most emulators are pretty resource hungry. I had hoped for maybe a Chrome extension or a browser that is based on mobile website debugging.
I wonder why it's not built into Dev Tools in the first place. It would seem like a super useful feature to be able to emulate a virtual keyboard there. Probably too difficult to implement. 😕
You can also have a virtual keyboard toggle on edge, personally I haven't used it, so not sure if it'll work always. You can enable it from
edge://flags/I cannot see such a flag, and searching for "edge virtual keyboard" only yield extensions (with low ratings). Are you on some preview version of edge?
I think its not supported on latest devices, it used to work before.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/VirtualKeyboard
This one.
MDN Web Docs
VirtualKeyboard - Web APIs | MDN
The VirtualKeyboard interface of the VirtualKeyboard API is useful on devices that have on-screen virtual keyboards, such as tablets, mobile phones, or other devices where a hardware keyboard may not be available.
I'll look into it. Thanks!
One of windows 11's original selling point is native support for android apps, but i have no idea where that's at right now. but if it works, perhaps you could run a mobile browse natively on pc?? Just came to mind
it's in the bin
microsoft stopped supporting it
then they threw it out of windows
Good one microsoft
One less reason for this os to exist
well, there is bluestacks ... yuck
yeah it works, you can install apk directly
but still works😂 just works, better to install emulators
it works slow, like ass and it will lock you out after 3-5 days with an ad
but getting a bit on topic, i think op needs a new cable
i never had any issues with remote debugging, even on an android 4.4 phone and a tablet, an android 9 phone, an android 13-15 phone
(i also debugged an android 2.1 tablet over wifi using opera dragonfly, without any issues or dropouts)