Chrome JavaScript Debugging - how to save break points between page refresh or break via code?

You can put a

debugger;

to break in most of the JavaScript environments. They will persist for sure. It's good to have a minifier that rids the debugger and console.log calls for the production environment, if you are using these.

In the recent versions of Chrome browser, there is a "Preserve Log" option on the top of the console panel, next to the filters. In the older versions, right clicking on the empty console window will bring that option ("Preserve log upon navigation"). It's handy when you don't have console.log statements or hard-coded debugger calls.

update: I found a tool on github, called chimney, which takes a file and removes all the console.log calls. it gives a good idea about how to remove debugger calls.

Set your breakpoints, switch to the Network tab and select the Preserve Log Upon Navigation toggle button. Now the breakpoints should be there when you refresh.

Or the JavaScript way is to use

debugger;

Also, do you send your JavaScript file(s) from the server to the client with an attached query parameter to the URL with the current Epoch time? This is used to prevent caching of the JavaScript file(s).

When this is the case, it seems like the Chrome Developer Tools interprets the file to be a different one after the refresh, which will (correctly) remove the breakpoints.

For me, removing the query parameter made the CDT keep the breakpoints after refresh.