Profiling remote targets with Firefox

22 February 2013 — San Francisco

A couple of months we landed the integrated JavaScript profiler. Since then we have received some good feedback and made lots of improvements. One upgrade is the ability to profile remote devices using your desktop version of Firefox. This feature is a part of our bigger effort to make sure that developers have the same high quality tools when developing mobile web apps as well as their desktop counterparts.

To enable remote profiling, first thing you’ll need to do is open about:config, set devtools.debugger.remote-enabled variable to true and restart your browser:

After you’ve done that, go to Tools -> Web Developer -> Connect and connect to your remote device[1]:

Once you’re successfully connected you’ll see a list of available tabs. Clicking on any of them will open a separate Developer Tools window with a profiler attached to that remote instance. That’s it!

So if you’re a B2G or Firefox for Android developer, give our profiler a try and share your feedback! Because everytime you share your feedback with us somewhere in the world two Mozillians high five each other and hug a kitten.

[1] — Here are a couple of links on how to setup your device for remote debugging and profiling: Setting up to debug on Firefox OS using Firefox developer tools, Remote debugging.