Debugging the Main Process

The browser window DevTools can only debug the renderer process scripts (i.e. the web pages). In order to provide a way to debug the scripts from the main process, Electron has provided the --debug and --debug-brk switches.

Command Line Switches

Use the following command line switches to debug Electron's main process:

--debug=[port]

When this switch is used Electron will listen for V8 debugger protocol messages on port. The default port is 5858.

--debug-brk=[port]

Like --debug but pauses the script on the first line.

Use node-inspector for Debugging

Note: Electron doesn't currently work very well with node-inspector, and the main process will crash if you inspect the process object under node-inspector's console.

1. Start the node-inspector server

$ node-inspector

2. Enable debug mode for Electron

You can either start Electron with a debug flag like:

$ electron --debug=5858 your/app

or, to pause your script on the first line:

$ electron --debug-brk=5858 your/app

3. Load the debugger UI

Open http://127.0.0.1:8080/debug?ws=127.0.0.1:8080&port=5858 in the Chrome browser.