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element-desktop/docs/debugging.md
David Baker 20f28abb47 prettier
2025-05-21 13:00:45 +01:00

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# Debugging Element-Desktop
There are two parts of the desktop app that you might want to debug.
## The renderer process
This is the regular element-web codeand can be debugged by just selecting 'toggle developer tools'
from the menu, even on ppackaged builds. This then works the same as chrome dev tools for element web.
## The main process
This is debugged as a node app, so:
1. Open any chrome dev tools window
1. Start element with the `--inspect-brk` flag
1. Notice that you now have a little green icon in the top left of your chrome devtools window, click it.
You are now debugging the code of the desktop app itself.
## The main process of a package app
When the app is shipped, electron's "fuses" are flipped, editing the electron binary itself to prevent certain features from being usable, one of which is debugging using `--inspect-brk` as above. You can flip the fuse back on Linux as follows:
```
sudo npx @electron/fuses write --app /opt/Element/element-desktop EnableNodeCliInspectArguments=on
```
A similar command will work, in theory, on mac and windows, except that this will break code signing (which is the point of fuses) so you would have to re-sign the app or somesuch.