The Safari Develop Menu
Written by Brent Sheets
Nov 20
Did you know there is a hidden “Develop” menu in the Safari Web browser? You might not if you’ve never done any Web development work. Don’t let the name put you off; you don’t have to be a developer to find many of the Develop menu options useful. Here’s how to enable the Develop menu in Safari.
Open Safari preferences by going to or using Command+, (that’s comma). Then click the button and select the checkbox labeled “Show Develop menu in menu bar.” Now look between the Bookmarks and Window menus and you’ll see a new choice — Develop. Click the image above to see the menu items of the Safari Develop menu.
The Develop menu lets you open the page you’re on in other browsers or quickly change your user agent on the fly. With one click, you can change the user agent to other versions of Safari, Mobile Safari (can you say iPhone!), Internet Explorer, Firefox or Opera. There are user agent versions for Mac, Windows, iPhone and iPod Touch. You can even type in a custom user agent string, if you wish.
The Develop menu allows you to show the Web Inspector, Error Console, Network Timeline and Snippet Editor or disable Caches, Images, Styles, JavaScript, Runaway JavaScript Timer and Site-specific Hacks.
Not bad for a hidden menu, huh? Enjoy.
