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Comment by mladenkovacevic | Hacker News Reader

I'm on Linux and installing a virtual box with a Safari browser just for that seems like too much trouble. I have access to my brother's iPhone but it's annoying for me and for him to have to push my changes to a staging site then go "hey can I use your iPhone for a second" every 5 minutes.

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Honestly, you're never going to be able to replicate the iPhone without using the browser engine it uses. These Chrome Dev Tools will have nothing to do with iPhone Safari.

Yeah it seems like I'm better off just getting a used 4S.

an iPod touch may be even cheaper.

Or get a cheap mac (mac mini, for example). Then you can run the iPhone emulator and use Safari to debug. Works really well.

Edit: Oh, you mean you tried this, but it works differently? Or are you using some linux-based dev tools?

No I've just been using the iPhone user agent "simulation" in Chrome's dev tools. All this does I think it set a reasonably correct resolution and scaling factor, but all the other rendering specifics get overlooked.

OK. The iPhone simulator that comes with Xcode is really close to the real thing. You need a mac for it though.

I have had success debugging iOS Safari layout issues with https://github.com/google/ios-webkit-debug-proxy. It claims to support Linux, but I have only used it on a Mac. Could be worth a shot.

This seems pretty cool (actually very similar to at least the port-forwarding part of OP's article - except for iOS), but I imagine on Linux you'd still need a device. On a Mac you could just use the Xcode's iOS simulator.

You don't need to push your changes to a staging server. Just have your computer and iPhone on the same wifi network. Then direct the iPhone's browser to your computer's IP address:port

e.g. 192.168:56:65:4000

Ah yes of course that makes sense. Can you tell I'm a total newb :) Thanks.

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