Enabling Web Inspector in Web-Kit WebViews in OS X Apps

You can turn on Safari’s Web Inspector functionality in any app that uses WebView to display HTML. First, enable the Developer menu in Safari’s preferences. Then enter the following command in Terminal:

defaults write com.example.myApp WebKitDeveloperExtras -bool true

Where com.example.myApp is the bundle identifier for the app. Launch the app, right-click in the WebView, and as long as the developer hasn’t completely disabled the context menu, you’ll be able to select Inspect Element and see the source code running in that view.

A program can enable this functionality itself by executing:

[[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] setBool:TRUE forKey:@"WebKitDeveloperExtras"];
[[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] synchronize];

Similarly, I believe one could defeat this functionality by setting the value to FALSE inside the app.

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