iPhone not appearing in Develop menu in Safari

Question

On my "Develop" menu, in Safari, the iPhone no longer appears after updating Safari to the latest version, making it impossible to inspect and debug sites and apps.

I restarted the iPhone, killed and relaunched Safari, restarted my Mac too, but the issue is still there. Affects both Safari mobile and phonegap applications.

Anyone experienced the same problem?

Answer 1

Turns out, my issue was that the update to the latest iOS version disabled the "Web Inspector" settings on my iPhone. To re-enable it, go to Settings > Safari > Advanced.

Answer 2

In my case, i did this steps and it is working good.

1. Removed cable from devices.
2. In iPhone Settings -> Safari -> Advanced -> Enable Web Inspector
3. Again iPhone Settings -> General -> Reset -> Reset Privacy and Reset Network. Restart phone.
4. Plugin-in cable iPhone and mac. Click trust button on the mac and iPhone.

Now it is working good. Web inspector appears again in the Safari develop menu.

Answer 3

I know all these tricks but after installing Catalina none of them worked. What DID work for me was Settings > Developer > Clear Trusted Computers. Strangely, the phone appears in the Safari Developer menu on the Mac, but the phone never asked to re-trust the computer!

The phone disappears again sometimes, but the same trick gets it back.

MacOS and iOS still look beautiful, but both are turning into a messy pigsty underneath. I sometimes wonder if Apple still even cares. :(

Answer 4

In my case, I was working from home and had a VPN tunnel to my work that was redirecting all traffic through my company's network. Disabling that revealed the phone in the Develop menu again.

As an alternative, connecting with VPN and disabling WIFI and Bluetooth works.

Answer 5

What helped for me was the following:

1. Open Xcode
2. On the Menu: Window -> Devices and Simulators
3. Check the Connect via network checkbox. (If it is already selected then uncheck it and re-check)

Answer 6

In my case, resetting only Privacy & Location did the job (but only temporarily, see update below!).

Try only resetting that before resetting your whole network settings for nothing!

Almost immediately after reset, the "Trust this Computer" popup appeared and after trusting my device appeared in the Develop menu.

---

Update:

I kept having regular issues with this (having to reset it multiple times per day, restarting Safari and a combination of other things) until I found the real fix here:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/58654871/167983

@BearSnowstorm:

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)

My comment on that answer describes the same thing but updated for Catalina:

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 @Florian 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.

Reading that answer my instinct was that it could not possibly make a difference, but it does! I have had zero issues since I did this. Try it!

Answer 7

FWIW, I tried all of these suggestions, and it worked briefly after resetting Privacy & Location settings but stopped working immediately after.

What ended up working as a long term solution was to turn both WiFi and Bluetooth off on the iPhone while connected to the Mac.

Answer 8

In my case the only solution was to reboot my Macbook... stupid but effective solution

Answer 9

reboot fix everything，works for me.

Answer 10

Seems the front ports of my Mac Pro were not working correctly, plugged the cable on the keyboard port and I was able to connect to the dev tools.

Answer 11

Some cables (even official Apple Lightning Connector) don't support this feature because of some damage inside. My Lightning Connector was able to charge the iPhone but prevented to use dev tools on the Mac. I used another cable to successfully connect to dev tools.

Answer 12

My solution was simply to move the cable to a different USB port.

Answer 13

I've tried with the reset of Privacy and Location but it didn't work. What worked for me was disabling the hotspot from the phone. With the hotspot active Safari doesn't shows the iPhone in the developer menu.

Answer 14

Turning off wifi on the iPhone allows it to appear in the develop menu.

The best and permanent solution in Catalina is to open a new Finder window, select in sidebar, then check 'Show this iPhone when on wifi'.

To disable caches (and to avoid constantly having to delete website data) open your site in a new Private Window. Changes to stylesheets will then update as normal.

Answer 15

In my case, this was totally a network issue. Everything works well when I used 4G network. If I use my wi-fi, safari failed to detect my device.

Answer 16

In our case we needed to reset the trust between iPhone & Mac. From iPhone Settings > General > Reset choose reset Privacy & Location and also Network Settings. The phone reboots, we reconnected to the laptop, tapped Yes to Trust this Computer and now Mac Safari can once again debug mobile Safari.

Answer 17

Crazy but true, when i disconnected bluetooth and tried to check under develop option, connected device was shown.