iPad is not showing in Develop menu on OSX Safari

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I need to debug an HTML app on ipad. I used to be able to connect ipad by USB cable to my mac and it would show in the "Develop" menu in Safari. I have two ipads now - one with iOS 6 and another with iOS 7. The iOS 6 one is showing correctly and I can access the web inspector from my mac. iOS 7 ipad is not showing in the "Develop" menu.

I have the latest version of iOS installed (version 7.1) and the latest version of Safari (7.0.2) on Maverick.

Any suggestions are welcome.

Barker answered 31/3, 2014 at 22:31 Comment(0)

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After all these years, I finally found out what the problem was! Apparently, Safari version on the Mac needs to be the same or newer than the version on the iPad. If iPad has a newer version than Mac, then it won't be visible. If Mac has the same or newer version, then iPad is visible and can be debugged.

I wish Apple had documented this anywhere - would have saved loads of time for a lot of people.

Barker answered 24/7, 2018 at 11:17 Comment(1)

You deserve a "Cookie". Thanks – Kelsy 25/10, 2018 at 17:23

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Enable web inspector on your iOS device by following these steps:

iOS Device > Settings app > Safari > Advanced > Web Inspector

This setting allows you to connect to safari on your desktop.

Chandrachandragupta answered 31/3, 2014 at 23:21 Comment(2)

If you read the question carefully, you'll understand that I have done that already. – Barker 1/4, 2014 at 7:38

This seems to be a common issue with no single way of resolving. look at using nightly build as discussed here or removing safari caches here – Chandrachandragupta 1/4, 2014 at 8:29

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I know this is a little late. I had this same issue and figured I would post how I got it to work in my case just in case it helps anyone in the future. I enabled it on the iPad and it didn't show. I tried closing Safari on the iPad, disconnecting and reconnecting the cable and neither worked. It ended up for me being really simple, I just quit of Safari on my laptop and restarted it and Safari then recognized the iPad and allowed me to debug. This may not work for every case but it did for me, hope it helps.

edit: just a note, I had the iPad plugged in with web inspector enabled when I restarted Safari.

Textualist answered 3/6, 2014 at 14:57 Comment(5)

Crazy, I just spent a good time trying to get this to work. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to debug my Cordova app with iOS 9 beta 3... – Archway 16/7, 2015 at 3:28

This super simple solution worked for me after an upgrade to El Capitan caused my iPhone to disappear from the develop menu. – Bunsen 8/10, 2015 at 12:9

yah just restarting safari worked when all else is setup. i'm in el capitan as well so don't know if that had anything to do with it, probably. – Unisexual 13/10, 2015 at 17:15

This also just worked for me, saving hours of frustration. I guess there is a bug in Safari... – Radiothorium 23/6, 2017 at 6:41

Thanks, this was helpful to try – Respect 13/1, 2020 at 19:34

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In my case I was running iOS 11 BETA on the iPhone, and was trying to access from Safari 10 (current stable version). I have installed Safari 11 BETA, and now it is working as expected.

So in general: Make sure you are running the latest version of Safari. And if you are testing on iOS BETAs, you can download Safari Betas & Safari Technology previews from here (Thank you for the link @Jacob Ford).

Swarm answered 9/8, 2017 at 10:53 Comment(4)

If the device briefly shows up in Safari Develop menu when you toggle Inspector on in iOS settings, then flickers out, this is likely the issue for you. Apple Developers may download Safari betas here. – Traynor 18/8, 2017 at 16:47

Steve, if you're listening, please come back! – Sympathizer 1/11, 2017 at 8:10

@JacobFord well done! that indeed fixed the issue I had with 2 devices running iOS11 (plugged to a Sierra Mac) – Storage 20/11, 2017 at 4:49

@JacobFord Thank you ! The link no longer works however Safari 11 is now out just update Safari – Cletacleti 21/1, 2018 at 17:26

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You also need to enable web inspector from the device.

Open the settings app, select safari, select advance and then turn on web inspector.

ref: http://www.spiraltrack.com/blog/how-debug-iphone-and-ipad-web-applications-using-safari.

Eileneeilis answered 29/4, 2014 at 15:56 Comment(3)

This. Totally this. 45 minutes of this, in fact. >.< You'd think installing a developer profile on a device would automatically switch things like this on, but I'm learning not to expect actual good design from Apple, just the impression of it. >.< – Clementclementas 30/12, 2014 at 4:17

This is very important !! I had followed the steps as mentioned everywhere, but strangely few people mentioned that we need to adjust the setting in the phone as well. It won't work until this is done! – Washstand 21/8, 2017 at 9:16

Link is no more :( – Hodgkins 22/7, 2019 at 14:0

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Using a genuine Apple lightning cable (instead of a fake one) solved my problem.

Secondclass answered 21/7, 2015 at 18:48 Comment(3)

I was always using the original cable that came with the iPad. – Barker 21/7, 2015 at 21:3

Thank you! This fixed my issue. – Asepsis 14/4, 2016 at 14:21

Just chiming in to say thank you, because this was my issue as well. – Bauble 21/7, 2022 at 16:4

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After all these years, I finally found out what the problem was! Apparently, Safari version on the Mac needs to be the same or newer than the version on the iPad. If iPad has a newer version than Mac, then it won't be visible. If Mac has the same or newer version, then iPad is visible and can be debugged.

I wish Apple had documented this anywhere - would have saved loads of time for a lot of people.

Barker answered 24/7, 2018 at 11:17 Comment(1)

You deserve a "Cookie". Thanks – Kelsy 25/10, 2018 at 17:23

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One more tip to try - after trying many of the above suggestions I turned off "Sync with this iPhone over Wi-Fi" in iTunes.

Voila! Got my iPhone into the Develop menu!

(for context, this is in Mojave 10.14.6, iOS 13.1.3, Safari 13.0.3)

Deventer answered 1/11, 2019 at 6:13 Comment(5)

Thank you! I tried all solutions and only yours worked. – Durance 2/11, 2019 at 1:17

Thank you so much for posting this! Why would a setting in iTunes prevent Safari from seeing the phone, even when iTunes isn't running and is set to not automatically open. This makes zero sense but it works. – Caloyer 8/11, 2019 at 21:14

I had this setting turned off by default. I had to enable and disable it again. – Zootechnics 25/11, 2019 at 20:1

Give this Man a Medal ! It took me 2 days - I saw your comment earlier but never thought it could work - it Works ! – Schwitzer 1/2, 2020 at 15:3

Wonderful! I had recurring issues with this and the only way I could make it work (sometimes) was to reset Location & Privacy, close Safari, unplug my device, etc. It was always a temporary fix though and the issues would come back very quickly. This however seems to work more permanently! I confirm what @Zootechnics said: the setting was off by default for me, turning it on then off (after letting the sync finish) worked. On Catalina, this setting is named "Show this iPhone when on Wi-Fi" under General when you select your iDevice in the Finder. – Backstairs 19/3, 2020 at 19:11

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If you already have enabled web inspector on your iOS device by following these steps and still it is not showing you can try just disabling and then again enable web Inspector in device's Safari browser.

iOS Device > Settings app > Safari > Advanced > Web Inspector

Cantabile answered 11/1, 2017 at 4:50 Comment(0)

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I just had to toggle the web inspector on and off on the device I was trying to connect and it showed up under Safari's develop menu:

iOS Device > Settings app > Safari > Advanced > Web Inspector

Beniamino answered 7/3, 2017 at 2:50 Comment(0)

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Had the same issue after updating to Safari 13 and Xcode 11.3 on macOS Catalina. For me the following change brought the iOS device back to Safari's Develop menu:

Connect the device via USB
Start Xcode and go to menu "Window > Devices and Simulators"
Select the device
Check the "Connect via network" option

Astoria answered 12/2, 2020 at 14:1 Comment(0)

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I've tried all the above but the only thing that works for me is to put iphone/ipad in airplane mode and then unplug/plug in the lighting cable a few times while keeping the develop menu open, once it shows up you can then turn off airplane mode

Steiner answered 6/12, 2019 at 15:17 Comment(4)

This worked for me, on average each time I had to unplug/plug ~ 5 times – Miquelon 1/1, 2020 at 21:8

Worked for me but I just had to unplug/plugin once. I guess I am lucky. – Glut 15/1, 2020 at 21:1

I can see the device in the menu, but when open the web inspect, it's empty – Trust 8/5, 2020 at 12:4

I found switching in and out of airplane mode enabled it! – Adonai 20/6, 2020 at 10:9

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Additional go to:

Device Settings -> Safari -> Private Browsing = OFF

Korean answered 16/2, 2016 at 10:55 Comment(0)

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Another gotcha for the basket: If you've another OS running in a virtual machine that you've forgotten about then the iPad can end up connected to that and hence invisible to Safari on the Mac.

Bricklaying answered 16/11, 2016 at 17:46 Comment(2)

Same here, when I run Homestead (Vagrant box) my iPhone while shortly show up in Safari dev tools and then "go away". If I stop the vagrant machine (vagrant halt) Safari and the dev tools work as expected. Did you found a way to disable the "USB forwarding"? – Bufford 18/5, 2017 at 8:1

My VMs are in Parallels which has configuration options for this. – Bricklaying 18/5, 2017 at 18:55

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For me, the problem was the different OS versions between the iPad and the iMac. I updated the iPad with the latest OS (iOS 11.2.2 at the time of this writing), but the iMac was under El Capitan (10.11.6) macOS. Once I updated the iMac to High Sierra (10.13.2) everything worked correctly.

Boche answered 12/1, 2018 at 20:29 Comment(0)

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I've found that Simulator is always in Safari's Develop menu if it's already running when Safari launches, and Simulator is never in the menu if Safari is launched first.

So you need to restart your Safari again.

That's Simulator 11.2 (comes with Xcode 9.1), Safari 11.0.3 and macOS 10.13.3

Incurvate answered 29/3, 2018 at 2:35 Comment(0)

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Similar to what BernieSF said, with a little more detail from my specific scenario. I was getting ready to upgrade my laptop to High Sierra to try and solve this, but I'm glad I didn't have to.

I have been trying to solve this for some time now, so maybe my situation will apply to someone else. The problem was the version of Safari I had installed on my older Macbook Air.

Symptoms: All the appropriate settings were enabled, and when I plugged in my phone to the USB cable, it would show up in the Develop tab, and then quickly disappear.

Setup: iPhone 7 on 11.3.1 and Macbook Air(3,2) on 10.12. On the Air, Safari was version 10.1.

I read in an Apple thread that for iOS 11, I needed to have Safari 11, but I had no option to update Safari in the App Store. There was a system update available, and the update to 10.13 available, but not Safari.

Solution:

I did the system updates (not the update to 10.13)
After my computer rebooted, the App Store then offered me an update to Safari 11.1.1 and I installed that

Voila! It now works!

Lam answered 7/6, 2018 at 18:39 Comment(0)

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I had this issue with iOS 13.2.3 on both macOS Mojave and Catalina.

When I disconnected the iPhone from the Wi-Fi and only connected it via the cable the dropdown in Safari showed the iPhone.

The solution for me was: In iTunes click the sync-settings button and enabling and then disabling the "Sync with this iPhone over Wi-Fi".

After that the iPhone showed up again in Safari's developer menu.

Zootechnics answered 25/11, 2019 at 19:59 Comment(0)

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I experienced the same issue today with iOS 13 and Mac OS 10.14 (Mojave).

What fixed it for me was simply installing a required Update in MacOS.

However, it is not an update that is installed via system preferences but only via a dialog that appears when trying to connect the devices.

Unfortunately the dialog appeared behind all other windows and could not be tabbed to. Thus I did not see it at all until I closed all other windows.

Regarding the dialog itself - here some information from Apple support:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208831

Physicality answered 2/12, 2019 at 18:30 Comment(0)

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In my case, I was using iOS beta version.

Xcode > Window > Devices and Simulators > Connect via network

then I can see error messages.

"The current device configuration is unsupported. This iPhone X (Model A1865, A1901, A1902,…" "To run on this device, please update to a version of Xcode that supports iOS 13.6. You can download Xcode from the Mac App Store or the Apple Developer website."

Oh yeah.

Fraya answered 6/9, 2020 at 16:30 Comment(0)

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Another thing to check is Build Settings > Signing > Code Signing Identity

Make sure both Release and Debug are set to iOS Developer

Bengaline answered 13/4, 2018 at 16:32 Comment(3)

This looks like something from xcode and this has nothing to do with that, but the Safari.app and iOS. – Glassful 5/10, 2019 at 20:37

@Glassful that is true - not sure what I was thinking when I answered this. – Bengaline 22/10, 2019 at 20:25

Thanks @whodeee. This worked. The Code Signing Identity in XCode was wrongly set to Adhoc porofile for me. For cordova apps to show in Safari's Develop menu the app must be signed with "Developer" profile and not Adhoc profile. – Croaky 3/3, 2020 at 8:39

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