[Feature Request] Disable devtools under webview mode

[konakona418]

Hi! I was wondering if there's any plan to support disabling DevTools (e.g., F12, Ctrl+Shift+I, etc.) when running in webview mode in the future?

I know there are some workarounds in JavaScript, but I’m curious whether this could be implemented more cleanly from the C side. As far as I know, WebView2 provides APIs for this functionality, so perhaps it could be integrated more natively.

[AlbertShown]

Yes, we can try to disable it on release mode and enable it in debug mode. Using JavaScript and C.

TypeScript:

webui/bridge/webui.ts

Line 163 in 7adbdc4

if (event.key === 'F5') event.preventDefault();

C:

#ifndef WEBUI_LOG
    // WEBUI_LOG is not defined, this is a release mode.
    // Let's disable F5, F12, Ctrl+Shift+I, etc....
#endif

[konakona418]

Yes, we can try to disable it on release mode and enable it in debug mode. Using JavaScript and C.

TypeScript:

webui/bridge/webui.ts

Line 163 in 7adbdc4

if (event.key === 'F5') event.preventDefault();
C:

#ifndef WEBUI_LOG
// WEBUI_LOG is not defined, this is a release mode.
// Let's disable F5, F12, Ctrl+Shift+I, etc....
#endif

Thanks for your help! I might write a possible implementation for Windows later on.

[konakona418]

I wrote a simple implementation for Windows WebView2 here.

[AlbertShown]

Thank you @konakona418, you can make it even more simpler, remove devtoolsEnabled flag, and do this:

#ifndef WEBUI_LOG
// Disabling dev tools.
settings->lpVtbl->put_AreDevToolsEnabled(settings, 0);
#endif

Note, this is ifndef, not ifdef.

[konakona418]

Thank you @konakona418, you can make it even more simpler, remove devtoolsEnabled flag, and do this:

#ifndef WEBUI_LOG
// Disabling dev tools.
settings->lpVtbl->put_AreDevToolsEnabled(settings, 0);
#endif
Note, this is ifndef, not ifdef.

Thanks for the suggestion! Is it necessary to open a PR for this? (As I only implemented this for WebView2)

I’d also like to ask whether it would make sense to introduce a separate config key for this feature, such as disable_devtools.

[AlbertShown]

Yes, you can open a PR as this still Beta, you or someone will implement it on Linux and macOS later.

No, I prefer to not create an option for this for now, because all wrappers will need to implement it, and in normal case, a debug mode should have all those options enabled (refresh, logs, dev-tools...), while in release mode all those options should be disabled.