How to save CSS changes of Styles panel of Chrome Developer Tools?

206
votes

How to save CSS changes of Styles panel of Google Chrome Developer Tools?

At tool's website it's mentioned that we can see all change in resource panel

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But I'm working locally on a CSS file but changes are not showing in Resource panel for me

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By the way Do you know any add-ons , tools to save css changes of Chrome Developer tools? I know for Firebug there are many https://stackoverflow.com/search?q=firebug+CSS+changes+save

11
htmlcssgoogle-chromegoogle-chrome-extensiongoogle-chrome-devtools
There's now an API for DevTools extensions to receive notifications on the resources being changed -- so you can create an extension that will integrate with your IDE of choice or just post the resource content to a WebDAV server: developer.chrome.com/extensions/… – caseq
I believe this question and its answers are obsolete, as Chrome has since moved its modified-CSS-saving functionality to the "Sources" panel. The functionality is fairly confusing, and somewhat misleading: I explored this modified-CSS-saving functionality of Chrome in some detail in this related Stack Overflow post: stackoverflow.com/questions/16005435/… – ChaseMoskal
Possible duplicate of Export CSS changes from inspector (webkit, firebug, etc) – mems
Local Overrides is a new way to do this, starting in Chrome 65. Overrides is a different feature than Workspaces. – Kayce Basques

11 Answers

141
votes

You can save your CSS changes from Chrome Dev Tools itself. Chrome now allows you to add local folders to your Workspace. After allowing Chrome access to the folder and adding the folder to the local workspace, you can map a web resource to a local resource.

  • Navigate to the Sources panel of the Developer Tools, Right-click in the left panel (where the files are listed) and select Add Folder to Workspace. You can get to a stylesheet in the Sources panel quickly by clicking the stylesheet at the top-right of each CSS rule for a selected element in the Elements panel.

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  • After adding the folder, you'll have to give Chrome access to the folder. Allow chrome access

  • Next, you need to map the network resource to the local resource.

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  • After reloading the page, Chrome now loads the local resources for the mapped files. To make things simpler, Chrome only shows you the local resources (so you don't get confused on as to whether you are editing the local or the network resource). To save your changes, press CTRL + S when editing the file.

p.s.

You may have to open the mapped file(s) and start editing to get Chrome apply the local version (date 201604.12).

43
votes

DevTools tech writer and developer advocate here.

Starting in Chrome 65, Local Overrides is a new, lightweight way to do this. This is a different feature than Workspaces.

Set up Overrides

  1. Go to Sources panel.
  2. Go to Overrides tab.
  3. Click Select Folder For Overrides.
  4. Select which directory you want to save your changes to.
  5. At the top of your viewport, click Allow to give DevTools read and write access to the directory.
  6. Make your changes. In the GIF below, you can see that the background:rosybrown change persists across page loads.

overrides demo

How overrides work

When you make a change in DevTools, DevTools saves the change to a modified copy of the file on your computer. When you reload the page, DevTools serves the modified file, rather than the network resource.

The difference between overrides and workspaces

Workspaces is designed to let you use DevTools as your IDE. It maps your repository code to the network code, using source maps. The real benefit is if you're minifying your code, or using code that needs to get transpiled, like SCSS, then the changes you make in DevTools (usually) get mapped back into your original source code. Overrides, on the other hand, let you modify and save any file on the web. It's a good solution if you just want to quickly experiment with changes, and save those changes across page loads.

19
votes

New versions of Chrome have a feature called workspaces which addresses this issue. You can define which paths on your webserver correspond to which paths on your system, then edit and save with just ctrl-s.

See: http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/developertools/revolutions2013/

13
votes

I know it is an old post, but I save it this way :

  1. Go to Sources pane.
  2. Click Show Navigator (to show the navigator pane on left).enter image description here
  3. Click the CSS file you want. (It will open in the editor, with all changes you made)
  4. Right click on editor and Save your changes.

You can also see Local Modifications to see your revisions, very interesting feature. Also work with scripts.

11
votes

You're looking in the wrong section of "Resources".

It's not under "Local Storage", it's under "Frames":

The above screenshot shows a diff of the original styles against the new modifications made in the devtools. You can right-click the item in the left pane and save it back to disk.

10
votes

Tincr Chrome extension is easier to install (no need to run node server) AND also comes with LiveReload like functionality out the box! Talk about bi-directional editing! :)

Tin.cr Website

Chrome Web Store Link

Andy's Blog Article

8
votes

Now that Chrome 18 was released last week with the required APIs, I published my chrome extension in the Chrome web store. The extension automatically saves changes in CSS or JS in Developer tools into the local disk. Go check it out.

5
votes

UPDATE 2019: As other answers are bit outdated, I'll add updated one here. In latest version there's no need to map the chrome folder to filesystem.

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So, suppose I have a web folder containing HTML,CSS,JS files in desktop which i want to be updated when I make changes in chrome:=

1) You'd need a running local server like node etc, alternatively this vscode extension creates the server for you: live server VSCode extension, install it, run the server.

2) load the html page in chrome from running local server.

3) Open devTools->Sources->Filesystem->Add folder to workspace

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4) Add the folder which is used in running local server. No additional mapping is required in latest chrome! Ta-da!

More on it Edit Files With Workspaces

Note that the changes made on the styles tab will NOT reflect on the filesystem files.
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Instead you need to go to devtools->source->your_folder and then make your changes there and reload the page to see the effect.

4
votes

FYI, If you're using inline styles or modifying the DOM directly (for instance adding an element), workspaces don't solve this problem. That's because the DOM is living in memory and there's not an actual file associated with the active state of the DOM.

For that, I like to take a "before" and "after" snapshot of the dom from the console: copy(document.getElementsByTagName('html')[0].outerHTML)

Then I place it in a diff tool to see my changes.

Diff tool image

Full article: https://medium.com/@theroccob/get-code-out-of-chrome-devtools-and-into-your-editor-defaf5651b4a

3
votes

As long as you haven't been sticking the CSS in element.style:

  1. Go to a style you have added. There should be a link saying inspector-stylesheet:

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  1. Click on that, and it will open up all the CSS that you have added in the sources panel

  2. Copy and paste it - yay!

If you have been using element.style:

You can just right-click on your HTML element, click Edit as HTML and then copy and paste the HTML with the inline styles.

1
votes

To answer the last part of your question about any extensions that can save changes, there is hotfix

It allows you to save changes from Chrome Dev Tools directly to GitHub. From there you can set up a post-receive hook on GitHub to automatically update your website.