I’ll spare you the long story of why I had to edit a JavaScript file, but today I learned that since Firefox 128 you can add a script override in the browser Debugger Panel. This downloads the JavaScript file in question, where you can edit it with your favourite editor.
- Open DevTools by hitting F12 and select the Debugger.
- Right-click on the JavaScript file in the source list and select “Add script override”.
- Save your file somewhere and edit.
- Reload the page to apply changes.
- Remove the override by right-clicking on the file again and selecting “Remove script override”.
The file I was editing was minified, so Firefox doesn’t save the nicely unminifed file you were looking at, but it’s not too hard to unminify it. It was a small change I was making, so it wasn’t too difficult to find the right place to edit.
Yes, yes, Chrome has been able to do this for a long time, apparently. Thanks for letting me know.
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@donncha I use both HTML and CSS editing in the debugger a lot but didn’t know you could edit JS now.I’m surely going to try that.
@dmbaturin oh yeah, editing HTML and CSS in the inspector is so handy. I hopefully won't have to edit JavaScript too often this way!
@donncha That’s much appreciated! Does it require manually choosing a folder to store overrides?
@vintprox you save the file wherever you like. It uses the standard download dialog. I was only editing one file for a test so I put it in my downloads directory and removed it afterwards.
@donncha I see. Recently tried this feature in Chrome and it required me to choose a folder for overrides, without offering me to type a custom file name.
TL;DR: It took Firefox just 10+ years to incorporate a feature that was part of the original Firebug? Hooray. /s
The hard irony of this is: It shows the priorities of the “main” developers behind Firefox. Or more like their non-priorities.
cu, w0lf.
just out of curiosity, do you edit the file inside Firefox or do you edit the saved file with an editor?
for more context: with Chrome it is possible to edit the script inside the browser (chrome asks for permission to edit files). but Firefox does not provide this feature for me
Wow, I’d quite forgotten about this. I haven’t had to edit an online JS script since then. Lucky me. 🙂
Yes, you have to edit the file in Vim or another external text editor. Reloading the page brings in the changes.