Why is Web Inspector showing me "no inspectable applications"?

Question

Background

My company recently made a shift to app development. While developing and Q/Aing on Android was relatively painless, iOS, on the other hand is proving to be a pain.

The task involves looking at the page source of our app (which has a custom browser). I heard that Web Inspector is a great tool, so I went with it.

Problem

• First of all, Web Inspector has been able to detect the custom browser before.
• But quite frequently, Web Inspector's menu gives the "No Inspectable Applications" prompt.
• This happens with the exact same version of the app that worked earlier.
• There seems to be no trigger whatsoever; yesterday Web Inspector was working with the custom browser, and then after a few hours (during which I may have disconnected and reconnected the iPhone) it stopped working.

I have not been able to figure out why despite breaking my head for a week.

Observations

I have an iPhone 4S running iOS 7.0.4. My Mac Mini has Safari 7.0.

In the phone options

• Web Inspector is turned on in the iPhone menu
• All privacy modes are set to off - Do Not Track, Block Cookies, etc. (this question)
• Javascript is turned on in the phone.

In Safari on my Mac Mini - Develop menu is enabled (obviously)

More observations

• iOS Safari is detected by Web Inspector.

So, how do I go about debugging this? What could be a possible cause and what could be the solution?

Answer 1

For me to make it work I needed to go into iPhone's Settings -> Safari > Advanced and enable Web Inspector option. (iOS 9.1)