How to launch tests in Chrome with the console docked at the bottom, not the right?

Question

Whenever I launch Karma on Chrome a new Chrome window pops up. When I bring up the console on this Chrome Window the console comes up attached to the right side. I prefer the console attached to the bottom so I always bring it down - its kind of annoying.

How can I get Karma to launch Chrome with the console docked at the bottom?

Answer 1

It seems that there is no straightforward way to do that.

Although you could specify custom launcher options for Chromium, there is no option that controls devtool position. (Though there is --auto-open-devtools-for-tabs that can also be handy in your case.)

However, there's a nice hack described in a related issue:

A brute force approach is to pass the --user-data-dir flag to a custom launcher:

browsers: ['Chrome'],
customLaunchers: {
  Chrome_DevTools_Saved_Prefs: {
    base: 'Chrome',
    flags: ['--user-data-dir=./tests/config/.chrome_dev_user']
  }
}

then

karma start --browsers Chrome_DevTools_Saved_Prefs

This will allow you to reuse the profile. When you want to test using a fresh profile, use the default Chrome launcher or wipe the user-data-dir.

UPDATE: as @KFunk points out, this case is covered in Karma's documentation in a bit nicer way:

customLaunchers: {
  Chrome_with_debugging: {
    base: 'Chrome',
    chromeDataDir: path.resolve(__dirname, '.chrome')
  }
}