How to activate the hidden developer menu

The Google Chrome development options are hidden in all versions of the app. As in Android, they are not actions that interest the regular user, but it never hurts to know how to access the menu and what it is for.

What do these developer options sound like?

If we stop to analyze smartphones and electronic devices a bit, we are aware that they hide many functions. The same thing happens with the applications, which are prepared to be a big surprise in general. Possibly the ones that hide the most information are Google apps, which always hide features for developers, including Google Chrome.

In fact, it is common, since several of the Google applications for Android have a hidden mode for developers that activates hidden functions, such as Android itself. Y Google Chrome is another of those apps: through the development options you can currently access the tracking log in the browser.

The open source DNA of Android makes this menu of developers sound like it has a precedent at the operating system level, which comes from the settings menu in the terminal. Likewise, it allows users to change many aspects of the internal operation of the device and that affect the overall performance of the device. Many of those options are found within the menu “Developer options”.

Its name is not accidental, since it is a series of options intended for app developers. By modifying many of the parameters found within this menu, you can check various factors and the behavior of your software developments. These options are disabled by default, that is, are not visible in the first instance since the menu is hidden.

To activate it, we will have to follow a process almost similar to the hidden menu of Google Chrome. We have to go to the settings menu of our phone and click on “About device” or “Phone information”. Once inside we will have to go down to the option “Build number ”and press seven times in a row about this option. It is likely that the PIN or Pattern will be requested to us to activate these developer options. Depending on one mobile or another, the version of Android that we have, as well as the customization layer of our manufacturer, we can find more or less options within this menu.

How to activate the developer menu in Google Chrome

To access development options on Android you have to click ten times in a row on the compilation number, a number found within the information of the software installed on the mobile, in its settings. And with Google Chrome the same thing happens; even though the deployed mode of development has only one option currently. Google hides in Chrome a development mode inherited from Chromium, the open source version that Google keeps in constant motion. And it is extremely easy to access this mode:

1. Open Google Chrome in your Android browser.
2. Go to the top three menu points and enter ‘Settings’.
3. Scroll down to ‘Chrome Information’ and enter the menu.
4. Press repeatedly (seven) on ‘App version‘until the developer options (‘ Developer options’) are activated.
5. Once activated you can browse through these options. At the moment the record of actions that Chrome performs in the background when loading web pages is active.
6. If you want to remove access to the developer options, you will have to delete the Chrome data. Make sure you have the data synchronized with your Google account and go to your mobile settings, then to ‘Applications’. Search for Chrome, enter its menu and go to ‘Storage’. Delete it and you have restored Chrome. Saved data (browsing, cache, settings …) are deleted.

With the option under development of ‘Tracing’

it is possible to make a monitoring of all actions performed by the browser in the background. In this way, possible errors in web pages are captured, a really useful option for webmasters. To do this, just start a new trace (‘Record trace’) and, once completed, share the file and then analyze it on the computer.

We can also configure some options on this function designed for developers. Among them, one of the most useful is in which we can establish the number of active categories so that they are subject to the monitoring of actions. Some of these categories are related to the source of the webs, passwords, web players for multimedia content and different elements.

Likewise, we can program the frequency of follow-ups, so that if we only want Chrome to do it on time, we must select »Record until full” in the section “Tracing mode». If, on the other hand, we want a more continuous tracking, we have to leave the option »Record continuously» selected.

As we say, it is a very useful tool for webmasters (web developer) and web page programmers, since it allows to carry out a site performance diagnostics and of the possible errors that exist for its later correction. However, this tool collects so much information that perhaps it is too much.

This is when the privacy element comes in, as all users don’t like to see all of their data meddled with. In this way, this Tracing function can contain data from both the user and the website that we own or visit, everything that has to do with the browser session. That does not only happen for the windows that we open normally, but also the windows open in incognito mode.