Debugging Across Multiple OTT Devices with a Unified Remote Debugger

As a streaming company, Tubi needs to support debugging on many platforms—including smartphones, smart TVs, game consoles, and voice‑assistant devices—yet developers face fragmented tooling and inconsistent debugging interfaces.

Typical solutions such as browser devtools, Safari/Chrome remote debugging, Eruda, vConsole, Android Debug Bridge (ADB), Visual Studio with Fiddler for Xbox, Samsung Tizen Studio, and Chromecast whitelisting are mentioned, but each requires separate setup and expertise.

To address this, Tubi built a unified remote debugger that leverages the Chrome DevTools Frontend and Backend together with the Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP). The architecture consists of three components: a debug target (the OTT device running an injected JavaScript script), a debug client (the developer’s UI), and a debug server that lists pages and forwards messages via WebSocket, enabling cross‑network debugging.

Using this system, developers can retrieve CSS styles, execute arbitrary JavaScript (e.g., navigator.userAgent), inspect network requests, and modify runtime values directly from the debugger UI, with results displayed just like Chrome’s native panels.

The remote debugger also simplifies data‑quality verification by replacing proxy tools such as Charles or Fiddler, and its extensible plugin architecture allows custom panels—for example, a Redux inspector for React stores.

Although not as powerful as native device debuggers, the remote debugger provides an economical, scalable solution that improves developer productivity and paves the way for future Tubi‑specific debugging panels.