Debug

With all the moving pieces in Tauri, you may run into a problem that requires debugging. There are many locations where error details are printed, and Tauri includes some tools to make the debugging process more straightforward.

Development Only Code

One of the most useful tools in your toolkit for debugging is the ability to add debugging statments in your code. However, you generally you don’t want these to end up in production, which is where the ability to check whether you’re running in development mode or not comes in handy.

In Rust

fn main() {
  // Whether the current instance was started with `tauri dev` or not.
  #[cfg(dev)]
  {
    // `tauri dev` only code
  }
  if cfg!(dev) {
    // `tauri dev` only code
  } else {
    // `tauri build` only code
  }
  let is_dev: bool = tauri::is_dev();

  // Whether debug assertions are enabled or not. This is true for `tauri dev` and `tauri build --debug`.
  #[cfg(debug_assertions)]
  {
    // Debug only code
  }
  if cfg!(debug_assertions) {
    // Debug only code
  } else {
    // Production only code
  }
}

Rust Console

The first place to look for errors is in the Rust Console. This is in the terminal where you ran, e.g., tauri dev. You can use the following code to print something to that console from within a Rust file:

println!("Message from Rust: {}", msg);

Sometimes you may have an error in your Rust code, and the Rust compiler can give you lots of information. If, for example, tauri dev crashes, you can rerun it like this on Linux and macOS:

RUST_BACKTRACE=1 tauri dev

or like this on Windows (PowerShell):

$env:RUST_BACKTRACE=1
tauri dev

This command gives you a granular stack trace. Generally speaking, the Rust compiler helps you by giving you detailed information about the issue, such as:

error[E0425]: cannot find value `sun` in this scope
  --> src/main.rs:11:5
   |
11 |     sun += i.to_string().parse::<u64>().unwrap();
   |     ^^^ help: a local variable with a similar name exists: `sum`

error: aborting due to previous error

For more information about this error, try `rustc --explain E0425`.

WebView Console

Right-click in the WebView, and choose Inspect Element. This opens up a web-inspector similar to the Chrome or Firefox dev tools you are used to. You can also use the Ctrl + Shift + i shortcut on Linux and Windows, and Command + Option + i on macOS to open the inspector.

The inspector is platform-specific, rendering the webkit2gtk WebInspector on Linux, Safari’s inspector on macOS and the Microsoft Edge DevTools on Windows.

Opening Devtools Programmatically

You can control the inspector window visibility by using the WebviewWindow::open_devtools and WebviewWindow::close_devtools functions:

tauri::Builder::default()
  .setup(|app| {
    #[cfg(debug_assertions)] // only include this code on debug builds
    {
      let window = app.get_webview_window("main").unwrap();
      window.open_devtools();
      window.close_devtools();
    }
    Ok(())
  });

Using the Inspector in Production

By default, the inspector is only enabled in development and debug builds unless you enable it with a Cargo feature.

Create a Debug Build

To create a debug build, run the tauri build --debug command.

npm

npm run tauri build -- --debug

yarn

yarn tauri build --debug

pnpm

pnpm tauri build --debug

cargo

cargo tauri build --debug

Like the normal build and dev processes, building takes some time the first time you run this command but is significantly faster on subsequent runs. The final bundled app has the development console enabled and is placed in src-tauri/target/debug/bundle.

You can also run a built app from the terminal, giving you the Rust compiler notes (in case of errors) or your println messages. Browse to the file src-tauri/target/(release|debug)/[app name] and run it in directly in your console or double-click the executable itself in the filesystem (note: the console closes on errors with this method).

Enable Devtools Feature

Danger

The devtools API is private on macOS. Using private APIs on macOS prevents your application from being accepted to the App Store.

To enable the devtools in production builds, you must enable the devtools Cargo feature in the src-tauri/Cargo.toml file:

[dependencies]
tauri = { version = "...", features = ["...", "devtools"] }

Debugging the Core Process

The Core process is powered by Rust so you can use GDB or LLDB to debug it. You can follow the Debugging in VS Code guide to learn how to use the LLDB VS Code Extension to debug the Core Process of Tauri applications.