Sensors: Emulate device sensors

Kayce Basques

Sofia Emelianova

Use the Sensors tab to emulate sensor input of any device:

• Override geolocation.
• Simulate orientation.
• Force touch.
• Emulate idle detector state.

Open the Sensors tab

1. Depending on your operating system, press the following to open the Command Menu:

   • On MacOS, Command+Shift+P
   • On Windows, Linux, or ChromeOS, Control+Shift+P

   

2. Type sensors, select Show Sensors, and press Enter. The Sensors tab opens up at the bottom of your DevTools window.

Override geolocation

Many websites take advantage of user location in order to provide a more relevant experience for their users. For example, a weather website might show the local forecast for a user's area, once the user has granted the website permission to access their location.

If you're building a UI that changes depending on where the user is located, you probably want to make sure that the site behaves correctly in different places around the world.

To override your geolocation, open the Sensors tab and, from the Geolocation list select one of the following:

• One of the preset cities, like Tokyo.
• Custom location to enter custom longitude and latitude coordinates.
• Select Location unavailable to see how your site behaves when the user's location is not available.

Simulate device orientation

To simulate different device orientations, open the Sensors tab, and, from the Orientation list, select one of the following:

• One of the preset orientations, like Portrait upside down.
• Custom orientation to provide your own exact orientation.

After selecting Custom orientation the alpha, beta, and gamma fields are enabled. See Alpha, Beta, and Gamma to understand how these axes work.

You can also set a custom orientation by dragging the Orientation Model. Hold Shift before dragging to rotate along the alpha axis.

Force touch

To test touch events on your website, you can force touch instead of click even if you're testing on a device without a touch screen.

To trigger touch events with your pointer:

1. Open the Sensors tab.
2. Under the Touch drop-down list, select Force touch.
3. Click Reload DevTools in the prompt at the top.

Emulate idle detector state

The Idle Detection API lets you detect inactive users and react on idle state changes. With DevTools, you can emulate idle state changes for both the user state and screen state instead of waiting for the actual idle state to change.

To emulate idle states:

1. Open the Sensors tab. For this tutorial, you can try it on this demo page.

2. Enable the checkbox next to Ephemeral and, in the prompt, grant the demo page the idle detection permission. Then, reload the page.

   

3. Under the Emulate Idle detector State drop-down, select one of the following:

   • No idle emulation
   • User active, screen unlocked
   • User active, screen locked
   • User idle, screen unlocked
   • User idle, screen locked

In this example, DevTools emulates an User idle, screen locked state and, in this case, the demo page starts the 10 second countdown to clear the canvas.