9 Useful Chrome DevTools Features You Might Be Missing

A practical overview of lesser-known DevTools tricks that improve debugging, accessibility, and performance workflows.

Developers use Chrome DevTools almost every day, but the toolset is so extensive that many features remain unnoticed. In this short overview, we’ll explore several DevTools capabilities that are genuinely useful in real-world work and often overlooked.

Maybe you already use some of them daily — or maybe these are exactly the features that will fill long-standing gaps in your debugging workflow.

Let’s get started.

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Understanding Accessibility with DevTools

Large companies often have dedicated accessibility teams, but smaller teams or solo developers still want to deliver accessible products. Chrome DevTools provides helpful tools for that.

1 Simulating Vision Deficiencies

DevTools can simulate visual impairments to show how users with different vision conditions see your UI:

Path: DevTools → Rendering → Emulate vision deficiencies

Available simulations include:

• Blurred Vision

• Reduced Contrast Sensitivity

• Protanopia (no red)

• Deuteranopia (no green)

• Tritanopia (no blue)

• Achromatopsia (no color)

This is extremely helpful for testing visual UX beyond contrast ratios.

If you don’t see the Emulate vision deficiencies option, open the Command Menu with Ctrl+Shift+P, type “Rendering”, select “Show Rendering”, and the panel will appear at the bottom of DevTools.

2 Accessibility in Inspect Element

Open DevTools, pick an element, and look beyond layout metrics like margin, width, or font-style. Chrome DevTools also exposes useful accessibility‑related information.

Contrast: text contrast ratio

One of the most common accessibility issues on the web is insufficient text contrast. Chrome no longer shows contrast in the Accessibility panel — instead, you’ll find it inside the color picker:

Styles → color → click the color square → Contrast ratio

Google provides guidance on how to detect and fix contrast problems, along with recommended minimum values: 3.0 (minimum) and 4.5 (recommended).

DevTools can also display contrast using the newer APCA algorithm. To enable it:

Settings → Experiments → Enable new Advanced Perceptual Contrast Algorithm (APCA)

These built‑in tools make it easier to validate essential accessibility properties without relying on external tooling.

3 Accessibility Tree

On the right panel, there is an Accessibility tab. Selecting an element in the DOM shows:

• how it appears in the accessibility tree, and

• which semantic attributes are relevant (aria-*, roles, content).

DevTools also offers a full accessibility tree, showing how a screen reader perceives the page. This makes it dramatically easier to audit semantic correctness.

To enable it:

1. Enable Accessibility Tree

2. Reload DevTools

3. Click the accessibility icon

You will see only semantically relevant nodes, not every DOM element.

4 Code Coverage for JS + CSS

Coverage shows which parts of your JS and CSS are actually used.

Open via:

DevTools → Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + P → “Show Coverage” → Record

You will see:

• Unused Bytes

• File URL

• Type (JS/CSS)

Inside a file, unused code is highlighted in red, used in green. This helps when:

• optimizing bundle size

• removing legacy code

• evaluating library usage

5 Lighthouse Accessibility Audit

Lighthouse can run an automated accessibility audit:

1. Open Lighthouse

2. Pick Mode and Device

3. Select only Accessibility

4. Click Analyze page load

You will receive:

• an accessibility score (0–100)

• actionable recommendations

Note: Lighthouse does not guarantee full accessibility compliance — it checks only measurable criteria. Manual testing is still required.

6 CSS Overview

CSS Overview provides a global snapshot of CSS usage:

It reports:

• all colors used in text, backgrounds, borders

• contrast issues

• font sizes & line-heights

• media queries

Open via:

Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + P → “Capture Overview” → Record

Very useful for cleanup and design audits.

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Console Tricks

The Console is packed with hidden gems. Here are three highly practical ones.

7 Edit the Whole Page Live

Entering:

document.designMode = "on"

makes all elements editable.

Use cases:

• designers can modify text live

• copywriters can adjust content without touching code

• marketing teams can mock ad banners or hero sections

Surprisingly useful.

8 Quick Access to Inspected Elements

DevTools keeps a history of inspected elements:

• $0 — most recently selected

• $1 — previous

• $2, $3, $4 — earlier selections

Example:

$0.style.background = "purple"

Great for quick tests instead of manual querySelector.

9 Live Expressions

Click the eye icon in the Console to create a Live Expression — a JS expression that evaluates every 250 ms.

Useful for watching:

• variable changes

• DOM state

• timers

• scroll positions

• FPS metrics

Final Thoughts

Chrome DevTools contains far more capabilities than most developers regularly touch. This article showcased a handful of rarely discussed but extremely useful features.

If you want to go deeper, the official DevTools documentation is the best place to start.

Good luck and happy debugging.