chrome.devtools.* APIs

The following API modules provide support for extending Chrome Developer Tools:

How to use DevTools APIs

  1. Specify the "devtools_page" field in your extension's manifest: 
    {
  "name": ...
  "version": "1.0",
  "minimum_chrome_version": "10.0",
  "devtools_page": "devtools.html",
  ...
}
  2. An instance of the devtools_page specified in your extension's manifest will be created for every Developer Tools window opened. The page may add other extension pages as panels and sidebars to the Developer Tools window using devtools.panels API.
  3. The chrome.devtools.* API modules are available only to the pages loaded within the Developer Tools window. Content scripts and other extension pages do not have these APIs. Thus, the APIs are available only through the lifetime of the Developer Tools window.
  4. The APIs available to extension pages within the Developer Tools window include all devtools modules listed above and chrome.extension API. Other extension APIs are not available to the Developer Tools pages, but you may invoke them by sending a request to the background page of your extension, similarly to how it's done in the content scripts.
  5. There are also some Developer Tools APIs that are still experimental. Please refer to chrome.experimental.* APIs for the list of experimental APIs and guidelines on how to use them.
  6. Give us feedback! Your comments and suggestions help us improve the APIs.

More information

For information on the standard APIs that extensions can use, see chrome.* APIs and Other APIs.

Examples

You can find examples that use Developer Tools APIs in Samples.