What happened to the Remote Devices panel?

Question

I'm running Chrome 80 and while getting ready for mobile debugging I observe the following:

The panel has been migrated to its own tab and its functionality has changed. I checked the changelog but there is no mention of this change. One of the features removed with this change was a way to import the device dimensions and properties into the Emulated Devices panel.

Is there any place to read up on this change and its reasoning? Even if it's a pull request I'd be happy.

Answer 1

Source code is the best documentation, so one way to find out is to go looking for this string:
https://cs.chromium.org/search/?q=%22this+panel+has+been+deprecated+in+favor+of+the%22&sq=package:chromium&type=cs

When you look at the history of file /src/third_party/devtools-frontend/src/front_end/devices/DevicesView.js, there is this recent commit 6239c24: "Remove "Remote Devices" panel":
https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/devtools/devtools-frontend/+/1909383

with the following document attached:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/14qasCOYYELcWtAp-y6N147Mvjv7eWmRsx1hFCB2M6w8/edit

DevTools has the "Remote Devices" tab which allows you to inspect devices like smartphones via technology like ADB. This functionality implements a subset of the features in chrome://inspect/#devices. To remove duplication and confusion for developers ("Which of the two tools should I use?", "Why does this panel not have all features? Oh I should have used the other one", and for devrel folks writing articles: "Which tool should I reference in my guide"?), we should remove the "Remote Devices" panel.

So maybe not what you expected, but it seems there's nothing more to it. Every rewrite has its lost features.

Answer 2

It looks like I've found something, which worked for me, I had to install this:

apt-get install android-platform-tools-base

then I had to re-enable debugging in my mobile phone settings (like this ) but it looks different on different Android devices. Also I had to reconnect USB cable several times, because this technology is still very unreilable.

Then I had to go here:

Answer 3

Debian 10:

I had to

sudo apt install android-tools-adb android-tools-fastboot

then run

adb devices

then I was able to see my device in the

chrome://inspect/#devices

menu.

You think they could have linked to some instructions about that on the page, or in the notice about deprecation.... The docs on google itself are out of date on this, and I had to hunt this answer down after going through several SO answers from 2012-2019 that were incorrect.

I followed the instructions here.