Support for Node.js debuggability landed in Node.js in 2016. Here’s how to get up and running. (Post updated Jan 2018)

1. Download and install the current version of node. (v6.3.0+ required)

2. Run node with the --inspect flag:

▸ node --inspect index.js

# Break on the first statement of the script with --inspect-brk ▸ node --inspect-brk index.js

(In Node 6, you have to use --inspect --debug-brk for this inspect & pseudo-breakpoint combo.)

Next, you used to open the big chrome-devtools:// URL it spits out, but don’t. Now there’s a better way…

3. Open about:inspect in Chrome

It’ll redirect you to chrome://inspect quickly and you’ll see something like:

chrome://inspect screenshot

4. Click the Open dedicated DevTools for Node link.

You’ll get a popup window for debugging your node session.

But better than that, when you kill and restart node, the window will automatically reconnect to it. 🔁🔁💥

(Btw: the inspect link beneath the specific target will only apply for that session of node and won’t reconnect.)

In DevTools, now connected to Node, you’ll have all the Chrome DevTools features you’re used to:

Complete breakpoint debugging, stepping w/ blackboxing

Source maps for transpiled code

LiveEdit: JavaScript hot-swap evaluation w/ V8

Console evaluation with ES6 feature/object support and custom object formatting

Sampling JavaScript profiler w/ flamechart

Heap snapshot inspection, heap allocation timeline, allocation profiling

Asynchronous stacks for native promises

To see this in action, here’s my demo during the 2017 Node Summit: