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I have just found this hidden setting:

  1. Open Stock browser (Not Chrome on ICS. about:debug doesn't work in Chrome. Use remote debugging instead.)
  2. In the address bar, type about:debug, nothing should happen, there will be no confirmation screen or flashing green box telling you that you've done anything.
  3. However, there should now be a few new options in the browser's Settings page.

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In Menu > More > Settings:

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In Menu > More, there is also:

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probably there are other new menus showing up that I haven't noted and the menus are very likely to be version specific.

While, I understand some of these settings, there are many of these settings that I don't understand, like where can I find the Javascript Console, what is being traced, what light touch and nav cache dump does, where do the dump files being saved to, what are the valid JS (Javascript?) flags, etc.

I find it difficult to Google what these setting do. I'd like help from others to play/experiment/Google with about:debug and write up what these settings do. Any bits of info you can gather is helpful.

Please have one answer per setting, unless you're describing interrelated settings.

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5
  • V8 is part of WebM video, isn't it?
    – ale
    Feb 15, 2011 at 17:31
  • 4
    @Al Everett: as far as I know, V8 is the javascript engine used in Chrome and by Android's Browser since Froyo(?) and above.
    – Lie Ryan
    Feb 15, 2011 at 17:36
  • I'm misremembering something, then. Happening a lot today.
    – ale
    Feb 15, 2011 at 18:23
  • 3
    @Al Everett: You're probably referring to VP8 Codec, which is part of WebM: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP8
    – Lie Ryan
    Feb 15, 2011 at 20:01
  • "Use remote debugging instead." Nobody seems to get this. Remote debugging requires a PC to debug. This is unacceptable. There are situations where you need to debug and all you have is a tablet with the power of a PC but without the software to actually debug
    – Michael
    Apr 17, 2014 at 23:35

4 Answers 4

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29

Javascript Console is this thing:

enter image description here enter image description here

For some reason, the "Show JavaScript console" bar will only show up in android.com website. Not sure whether the Syntax Error triggers the console or if there is another reason why it shows in android.com and none of the other sites I've been checking.

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2
  • 4
    I can confirm that the console option shows up only when a JS error is triggered. Here's a simple jsbin that triggers an error (and loads a lot faster): jsbin.com/owecey
    – Jörn Zaefferer
    Jan 21, 2012 at 11:54
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    I am unable to see the console on my HTC thunderbolt after doing about:debug and going to jsbin.com/owecey . Does anyone have any suggestions? My Android Version is 2.3.4, and my HTC Sense Version (if it matteres) is 2.1
    – bnieland
    Apr 27, 2013 at 12:20
10

The about:debug menu on the HTC Desire HD has an option under Menu > More > Settings called "Enable GEP Zoom". This turns off HTC's Text reflow feature and uses the default Google zoom.

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9

UAString will change the User Agent String that Browser sends when requesting page. User Agent String is a short string (text) that the Browser sends to identify itself to the server. Many websites tries to detect the browser that is connecting to the website, and will serve different pages that is optimized for the browser. One of the most common method for such browser detection is by checking the UAString. The UAString setting basically spoofs the UAString and makes the server believes that Android Browser is really another browser.

There are three options for UAString:

  • Android (default)
  • Desktop
  • iPhone

The Android UAString is the default UAString that is sent by Android, websites may serve a mobile version of their site when detecting this UAString. Desktop can be used to force the server to serve the Desktop version of the site instead of serving up mobile-friendly version. On the other hand, iPhone UAString can be used if you know that the server have a mobile friendly version optimized for iPhone, but is not detecting Android as a mobile phone and so is falsely serving a desktop version.

For example, this is what http://www.useragentstring.com detects when my Samsung Spica used the various settings:

  • when using Android: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.2.2; en-au; GT-I5700 Build/Froyo) AppleWebkit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1
  • when using Desktop: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_5_7; en-us) AppleWebkit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Safari/530.17
  • when using iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebkit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7A341 Safari/528.16
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4
  • On the Desire HD you can also choose from "iPad" and "Manual". Manual pops up a text box so you can pretend to be any browser you like.
    – Matt H
    Feb 15, 2011 at 18:00
  • You can access this setting directly by entering about:useragent in the url bar. On my Smsung Galaxy S I have a choice of Android, Iphone, Desktop, Lismore, Custom
    – fearoffours
    Mar 16, 2011 at 13:13
  • CyanogenMod 7 has quite a few options for UAString, but it's available from the menus & you don't need about:debug.
    – Broam
    Apr 9, 2012 at 20:18
  • There are more than just those three user agents. The box that displays them, in horizontal mode, only shows 3, but in vertical mode, shows many more. The box does not have scroll bars :/ atleast on 2.2.3 Webkit based stock browser.
    – cde
    Dec 14, 2014 at 5:11
9

Single Column Rendering causes Browser to use a different layouting algorithm.

I'm not exactly sure what the algorithm's logic is, but it seems to be an attempt to force a website that were not designed for mobile to render in a single column for easier viewing on small screens. Not sure if that's the case though, since enabling single-column view breaks the layout of android.stackexchange.com and disables text reflow, which makes reading much more painful than when using the default layouting. It seems this feature is not used for a reason, I cannot find a single web page that looks better when rendered in Single column rendering mode; even pages optimized for mobile views looks better in default than in Single-column mode.

The following are some screenshots comparing default and single-column rendering, the screenshot on the left are in no-single-column the screenshot on the right are the same page with single-column:

android.stackexchange.com

enter image description here enter image description here

android.com

enter image description here enter image description here

Wikipedia today's front page Mobile View:

enter image description here enter image description here

Wikipedia today's front page disable Mobile View:

enter image description here enter image description here

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  • The word and the picture overlap one another. Is this website specific or browser specific settings? Can word wrap make the page look better?
    – Lucky
    Jul 1, 2015 at 12:00

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