===================
Web Console UI Tour
===================

The Web Console's interface is split into three horizontal sections, detailed in the sections below.

.. image:: web_console.png
  :alt: Web console" alt="Screenshot of FF web console
  :class: center


.. _web_console_ui_tour_toolbar:

Toolbar
*******

The toolbar across the top contains a number of features:


- **Garbage can:** Click this icon to clear the contents of the console.
- **Funnel (filter):** Enter text to filter the messages that are displayed in the console message pane. :ref:`Plain-text <web_console_ui_tour_filtering_by_text>` and :ref:`regular expression <web_console_ui_tour_filtering_by_regular_expressions>` filtering are supported.
- :ref:`Filter categories <web_console_ui_tour_filtering_by_category>`: Toggle a filter category (such as Errors, Warnings, CSS, or XHR) to display messages of that type in the message page (the UI shows the number of hidden message for unselected categories).
- **Settings ("gear" menu):** Select the gear icon to access the settings menu (New in Firefox 71), where you can toggle the following features on and off:

  - **Persist Logs**: When enabled, the console doesn't clear on page reload, or new page load.
  - **Show Timestamps**: When enabled, timestamps are shown on the left-hand side of each message row to say when the messages were logged.
  - **Group Similar Messages**: When enabled, similar types of messages are grouped together, with an indicator of the number of occurrences.
  - **Enable Autocompletion**: When enabled, the JavaScript interpreter attempts to autocomplete while you type.
  - **Instant Evaluation**: When enabled, the interpreter displays the evaluated results of an expression, when possible, before you press :kbd:`Enter` to submit it.



Message display pane
********************

This is where the messages appear, both those generated by the code in the page, and those generated by the commands entered on the command line.

See :doc:`Console messages <../the_command_line_interpreter/index>` for a lot more detail on what the messages can contain.

.. note::

  You can clear the contents of the console by entering the keyboard command :kbd:`Ctrl` + :kbd:`Shift` + :kbd:`L` (Windows, macOS, and Linux) or :kbd:`Cmd` + :kbd:`K` on macOS.


Command line
************

The :doc:`command line <../the_command_line_interpreter/index>` starts with double angle brackets (>>). Use it to enter JavaScript expressions.

In Firefox 71 onwards, there is a new "split pane" icon on the right hand side of the command line — clicking this will open the new console :ref:`multi-line mode <command_line_interpreter_multi_line_mode>`.
