Debugging Web Workers

May 22, 2019

Web Workers API allows you to start a separate worker thread and receives and execute tasks off the main thread.

Since worker runs in a separate worker thread, how would you debug, ie set breakpoint, console log, and inspect your worker script?

Here's how you would do it for various major browsers:


If you are debugging service worker or worker, you can head down to the console. There's a dropdown menu, if you haven't noticed previously, that says "JavaScript context".

chrome console

chrome console context

For worker context, you would see a cog logo beside the name.

After you choose the worker context, you can type self into the console, and you should see self is an instance of DedicatedWorkerGlobalScope instead of window.

chrome worker context

For shared worker, you would need to go to chrome://inspect/#workers. Select "Shared workers" on the left panel.

chrome shared worker

You would be able to see a list of shared workers if you have any running.

You can click "inspect", which will open a new console for you to debug.


For Firefox, you could go to about:debugging#workers. You will be able to see a list of service workers, and shared workers registered to the browser.

firefox shared worker


For Safari, you could find the JavaScript context dropdown at the bottom right corner of your console.

safari console context