WebView Chrome DevTools inspector is broken

Vega Open Beta Q&A
1

Device: Fire TV Stick, product callie, armv7l, serial A1TGF7GBNNZ9EE
Build: OS 1.2 (TV Ship/40) — previously verified working on OS 1.1 (TV Ship/27)
SDK: Vega CLI 1.2.18, active SDK 0.24.9914 (also reproduced on 0.22.6759)
App: debug vpkg (NODE_ENV=development, BUILD_TYPE=Debug), RN 0.72 + Hermes, WebView-hosted signage UI

Summary: The documented WebView remote-debugging path (both the raw vega device start-port-forwarding -p 9229 CLI recipe and Vega Studio’s “Chrome DevTools” sidebar action) stopped working after this device’s OS updated from 1.1 to 1.2. React Native/Hermes debugging via Metro (:8081) is unaffected — only the WebView/Chromium inspector is broken.

What we’ve confirmed:

  1. vega device start-port-forwarding -p 9229 -f true reports success, and vega device is-port-forwarded returns true, but on-device netstat -tlnp shows nothing listening on 9229.
    curl/CDP client connections are TCP-accepted then return zero bytes.
    Reproduced across a manually-restarted app instance, a fresh cold launch-app, and a full port-forward stop/start reset.
  2. Port 8999 (bound 0.0.0.0, no forwarding needed) IS listening and responds to any path (/json/list, /, etc.) with a genuine HTTP 502 Bad gateway — suggesting a devtools-discovery proxy is alive at the OS level but has no backend to reach, consistent with the WebView’s inspector server never starting.
  3. Every app launch (any launch method) logs: [AutoLinkService] Library ‘DevToolsSettingsManager’ not found in any available source (Priority 1: OS metadata, Priority 2: system enum, Priority 3: app metadata)
  4. DevToolsSettingsManager does not appear anywhere in the local Vega SDK tree (0.24.9914) — no IDL, no package — so this is not something resolvable via manifest.toml’s needs.module. It appears to be purely OS-provided.
  5. vega device info confirms inDeveloperMode: true, ruling that out as the cause.
  6. Vega Studio’s install/launch itself succeeds (confirmed via the SDK’s own operation log — vpm install and vmsgr send pkg://… both report success) — the failure is specifically in getting DevTools attached afterward, not in installing/launching the app.

Question: Is DevToolsSettingsManager expected to be present on a “Ship” OS build, or does WebView debugging now require a different (dev/test) OS image variant on 1.2?

Was this component intentionally removed between OS 1.1 and 1.2, and if so, what’s the supported replacement path for WebView CDP access on Ship builds?

Happy to provide full log captures (vda logs/SDK operation logs) on request.

4

Hi @Boris_Rekhtman1,

Thank you for your detailed report on the WebView Chrome DevTools inspector issue after the OS 1.2 update. The level of detail you’ve provided - including the environment specifics, reproduction steps, and the DevToolsSettingsManager library-not-found observation - is extremely helpful for our investigation.

Our team is looking into this and will provide an update as soon as we have more information.

Thanks for helping us improve the Vega platform.

Warm regards,
Aishwarya