Dev Tool FAQ

Screendesk captures DevTools-style context alongside your screenshot, recording, or Instant Replay.

Use this page to understand what’s captured, how playback sync works, and what’s not supported yet.

Playback and sharing

Timeline sync (video ↔ logs)

While you play a recording, Console and Network entries follow the recording timeline.

This works both ways:

• Scrub the video to see what happened around a log entry.

• Click a log/request timestamp to jump the video to that moment.

If the auto-scroll is distracting, disable it in the DevTools viewer options.

Highlight a log or request

Click any console log or network request to highlight it.

When you share the link, viewers will see the same highlight.

Console

What Screendesk captures

Events

• Navigation: initial page load and History API navigation (pushState / replaceState)

• Clicks: clicks that reach the document level, including the clicked element

• Script errors: uncaught errors from window.addEventListener('error')

• Unhandled promise rejections: from window.addEventListener('unhandledrejection')

Console API

• console.log, console.info, console.warn, console.error, console.debug

• console.assert, console.trace (includes a captured stack trace)

• console.dir / console.dirxml, console.table

• console.group / console.groupCollapsed / console.groupEnd

• console.count / console.countReset

• console.time / console.timeEnd / console.timeLog

• console.profile / console.profileEnd

• console.clear

Storage

• localStorage updates (added, updated, removed)*

• sessionStorage updates (added, updated, removed)*

Web Vitals

• CLS, INP, LCP, TTFB

Limits

Console logs are rate-limited to 30 logs/second.

Logs above the limit are dropped to avoid performance issues.

Notes and caveats

• Some calls are captured as events, so the displayed output can differ from native browser DevTools.

• console.group: the label is captured, but group nesting from before capture isn’t restored.

• console.count: the count value is captured at call time.

• console.time: the duration is captured when timeEnd / timeLog runs.

• console.profile: only start/end calls are recorded, not full profile data.

* Storage changes rely on the browser storage event. Custom storage wrappers that don’t trigger it may not show changes.

Network

Screendesk captures requests with timing, headers, and (for some types) bodies.

Request types

Type	What it includes
XHR	Full request + response body
Fetch	Full request + response body
Beacon	Request only (sendBeacon)
WebSocket	Connection events
Script	Timing only
CSS	Timing only
Image	Timing only
Font	Timing only
Media	Timing only
Document	Timing only (includes iframes)

What’s stored per request

• URL, method, status, resource type

• Duration (ms), transfer size (bytes)

• Request headers (with redaction for sensitive auth headers)

• Response headers

• Request/response body (XHR + Fetch only)

• Cache status (served from cache or not)

How resource timing is captured

Resource timing uses PerformanceObserver.

This provides accurate timings, transfer size, and cache detection.

System information

System Information shows the environment where the capture was created:

• URL and capture timestamp

• OS, browser, and browser engine

• Screen resolution and window size

• Device type, vendor, locale, and timezone

• Screendesk extension version

• Upload-time network metrics (download speed and latency)

On macOS 10.15+, Apple limits access to the precise OS version. Screendesk can only report “10.15.7 or later”.

End-to-End (E2E) helper

The E2E helper converts captured interactions into a starter test script.

Captured actions can include navigation, clicks (with selectors), and keyboard input.

Supported frameworks

• Playwright (.spec.ts)

• Cypress (.cy.js)

• Puppeteer (.test.js)

• Selenium (.test.js)

Framework output (React / Vue)

When React or Vue components are logged, Screendesk renders them in a readable format.

Screendesk stays framework-agnostic. It doesn’t add special support for Redux, MobX, Vuex, etc.

AMP pages can show incomplete technical data. AMP often wraps content in iframes.

Not captured (current limitations)

Screendesk does not currently capture:

• Cookie mutations (document.cookie)

• IndexedDB operations

• Sourcemaps (stack traces can point to minified code)

• Activity inside iframe content

• Requests made by Service Workers

• Console output from Web Workers

FAQs

Why don’t some console entries look exactly like browser DevTools?

Some console methods are captured as structured events.

Screendesk focuses on reproducibility and timeline context over byte-for-byte rendering.

Can I turn off the automatic log scrolling?

Yes. Disable auto-scroll in the DevTools viewer options.

Why don’t I see request/response bodies for every network item?

Bodies are captured for XHR and Fetch.

Most other resource types include timing only.