Hello everyone!
I've been working on something special for the past 2+ months now and would like to share it with all of you now. To put it very briefly, you are now able to inspect Ash (or ChromeOS UI) with DevTools.
Inspecting web pages in Chrome has been possible for a long time using the DevTools inspector. Now, with what I've been working on, you are able to inspect the ChromeOS UI using the same inspector. Not convinced? Here's an example of what the structure looks like:
Windows, widgets, views. You got it all in there. Here's the best part...this actually updates as the Ash window tree hierarchy changes. Here's a quick ~50 second GIF (might take a few seconds to load):

It only takes 3 steps to run this:
- Run Chromium with the UI DevTools flag:
$ chrome.exe --enable-ui-devtools=<port>
- In your Chrome browser on Ash, visit
chrome://inspect#other
- Click
inspect Ash in the listing. This will open up the inspector in a new tab.
If you wish to debug remotely, simply open chrome-devtools://devtools/bundled/inspector.html?ws=localhost:<port>/0 in your Chrome browser.
Current features:
- View the window/widget/view hierarchy
- Selecting nodes in the inspector displays their attributes (height, width, x, y) in the CSS side panel
- Any changes in the tree (addition/removal/rearranging of elements) in Ash will be reflected in the inspector
Planned features:
- Any animations initiated in Ash are displayed in the inspector under the "Animations" tab and can be replayed
- Hovering over elements in the inspector highlights them in Ash, and vice-versa
- Much more!
All information above (and more) can be found here.
And of course, please do let me know if you have comments, suggestions, or any feedback at all.
Thank you,
Sarmad Hashmi