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Does Firefox support auto-opening developer tools for pop-ups or new tabs?

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Greetings.

I am looking to monitor HTTP requests through the developer tools console under "Network" to assist myself in writing some web scraping scripts.

How this is related to my question is that part of my scraping requires navigating pages whose links or POST requests open new tabs. The POST requests and possibly other information is missed because the developer tools console does not open by default for new tabs or pop-ups.

As a comparison, Chrome has the command line flag "--auto-open-devtools-for-tabs" and a "Automatically open developer tools for pop-ups" option buried somewhere in settings. Does Firefox have a similar feature somewhere?

I tried searching online but to no avail, all I found were references to legacy tools like Firebug.

Greetings. I am looking to monitor HTTP requests through the developer tools console under "Network" to assist myself in writing some web scraping scripts. How this is related to my question is that part of my scraping requires navigating pages whose links or POST requests open new tabs. The POST requests and possibly other information is missed because the developer tools console does not open by default for new tabs or pop-ups. As a comparison, Chrome has the command line flag "--auto-open-devtools-for-tabs" and a "Automatically open developer tools for pop-ups" option buried somewhere in settings. Does Firefox have a similar feature somewhere? I tried searching online but to no avail, all I found were references to legacy tools like Firebug.

All Replies (4)

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You can use the --devtools command line flag when you open Firefox (in the Firefox shortcut, for example) and this will automatically open the developer tools on startup.

However, this will only open the developer tools on the tab/window that you open during the Firefox startup. Firefox does not currently allow you to automatically open the developer tools when you open a new tab or window.

Sorry but that's the best information I have for you.

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I see. I am open to alternative solutions such as using an add-on, however I cannot seem to find one for what I need.

My current (but inefficient) workaround is to tweak a couple of settings in about:config:

  • browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction = 0
  • browser.link.open_newwindow = 1

This forces redirects and links to occur in the same tab. I do not see this as a solution though.

Modified by granolabottle

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I don't see any add-ons that would help you with this functionality.

I've submitted a feature request to the Firefox developers (see bug 1522025) because it's a good idea to add to the browser. Hopefully it will eventually make its way into a future release of Firefox.