How to detect Chrome Inspect Element is running or not? [duplicate]

Question

Is there any way to detect whether the Chrome Inspect Element window is running?

For example if the user clicks "Inspect Element" in Chrome, the window shows a Hello World alert.

Is that possible?

Answer 1

UPDATE This no longer works. The property console.profiles has been removed in Chrome 29.

The only solution that's left is checking the difference between window.outerHeight and window.innerHeight as suggested by @Gerben. There is a library devtools-detect based on this method which adds devtoolschange to the window object.

Alternatively, there is an effort in progress to create a Chrome extension using a more robust detection method, see this Google Group.

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Here's how they check if DevTools are open in the first challenge of Discover DevTools interactive course:

function () {     console.profile();      console.profileEnd();      if(console.clear) { console.clear() };     return console.profiles.length > 0; }