Inspection is broken on iOS 26.2

[thomascallahan]

• Inspect version: 2.0.0
• Electron: 39.2.7
• OS version and architecture: linux x64 6.18.3-2-cachyos
• Language: en_US.UTF-8

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Open any page
2. See only partial functionality

I'm testing Inspect 2.0 on an iPad and iPhone running iOS/iPadOS 26.2, with a Linux (CachyOS) host.

The setup process never actually completed even though the diagnostics said everything was OK -- it was stuck on the "Waiting for device to connect" screen. This is using an Apple USB C wire so I'm pretty sure it's not a physical connection issue. Both my iDevices and laptop popped up with the usual "trust" dialogs, which I completed. Web Inspector is enabled on both devices.

So after a couple of tries, I clicked "I'll connect later" just to see what happened, and then could actually see my devices in Inspect.

However, while Inspect can list the open tabs for Safari (and even Vivaldi iOS even though there's no Web Inspector), if I mouse over a tab in the list the web page on the device highlights light blue like it would if I was hovering over something in the standard dev tools. And I can't anything under Elements, Console, or any other dev tools tab, they're just completely blank (see screenshot).

Right-clicking on the tabs in the list and choosing Reload does nothing on the device, but open in local browser does work.

So Inspect can clearly see my device and talk to Safari, but is failing somewhere. Maybe the web inspector integration isn't working, so while it can get very basic info about the tab, it can't actually inspect what's in it?

[dosubot]

Hi @thomascallahan! I'm Dosu and I’m helping the inspect-issues team.

This is a known issue with Inspect and iOS 26.x—multiple users have reported that Elements, Console, and other dev tools tabs remain blank even though devices and tabs are detected. There isn’t a definitive fix yet, but some users have had success by restarting both Inspect and the iOS device, and by disabling and re-enabling any Safari extensions (like Kagi) on the device. Sometimes the issue resolves itself after a few device resets or after some time, suggesting it can be environmental or intermittent rather than a persistent bug.

Inspect maintainers have acknowledged the problem and indicated that a fix is planned for a future release. If the issue persists, you can check Inspect’s logs (menu bar > open logs) to see if there are any errors, and note if it happens on all sites or just specific ones. There are no Linux-specific fixes or extra configuration steps documented for this scenario. More details and user reports are available in this thread and here.

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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[auchenberg]

@thomascallahan Can I get you to click Help & Feedback -> Device and target diagnostics, and let us know what you see? Also please attach the logs, which you can get from cliking your name in the top left -> view logs

[thomascallahan]

@auchenberg

Logs:
https://www.tom-callahan.com/inspect-logs/main.log
https://www.tom-callahan.com/inspect-logs/deviceAdaptor.log

Device and target diagnostics seem OK. All green at any rate. The only thing I see is that it couldn't "directly" verify Web Inspector is enabled, but I double checked and it is (and inspection works from Safari on a Mac with the same phone).

[auchenberg]

Root Cause Analysis

This is an iOS 26.2 compatibility issue. The WebInspector protocol is failing because the page becomes non-debuggable immediately after Inspect attempts to connect.

Timeline from the logs:

1. 20:14:44.870 - Page detected as isDebuggable: true
2. 20:14:47.377 - Inspect sends socket setup to start inspection
3. 20:14:47.584 - Page changes to isDebuggable: false (the problem!)
4. After that, all protocol domains fail:
   - 'CSS' domain was not found
   - 'Debugger' domain was not found
   - 'Runtime' domain was not found

Key Findings:

Aspect	Status
Device detection	Working
Tab listing	Working
Hover highlighting	Working
Socket connection	Succeeds initially
Page inspection	Fails - domains rejected

The log shows WIRAutomationAvailabilityNotAvailable which indicates Safari automation features are restricted. Critically, upon Inspect's connection attempt, iOS 26 immediately
switches the page from debuggable to non-debuggable.

Likely Cause:

iOS 26.2 appears to have introduced changes to the WebInspector protocol or added new authentication/verification requirements for non-macOS inspection
clients. This explains why:

• It works on macOS Safari (native tool, trusted)
• It fails from Linux Inspect (third-party tool, not trusted by new iOS 26 restrictions)

[auchenberg]

@thomascallahan Tom, I think we found the issue, can I get you to download this build of Inspect and see if that solves the problem?

https://download.inspect.dev/builds/26011411odxb1yl/linux/appImage/x64

https://download.inspect.dev/builds/26011411odxb1yl/linux/deb/x64

https://download.inspect.dev/builds/26011411odxb1yl/linux/rpm/x64

https://download.inspect.dev/builds/26011411odxb1yl/linux/snap/x64

[thomascallahan]

@auchenberg yes, that worked!

[auchenberg]

Bam. great! We'll roll out this release then. Closing for now.