Recently I had to replace my Windows PC at work, and as a result, had to reinstall all of my applications, including Google Chrome. When I tried to open Chrome Developer Tools using the F12 key, nothing happened. The Inspect option seen when right-clicking on a web page was grayed out. I opened the drop-down menu to try to open DevTools from there, and that option was also grayed out.
Several searches indicated that one could look at Chrome Policies (accessible at chrome://policy if you’re running Chrome) to see if it was disabled there. Sure enough, that was the case.
Chrome Policies are not editable from this page; in Windows one must edit them via the Windows Registry.
Open the Registry using regedit.exe from a Command Prompt or a shortcut in the Start Menu, and navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome] and set the key called DeveloperToolsDisabled to 0.
![Registry Editor showing [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome] branch](https://i0.wp.com/deepinthecode.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/registry-1.png?ssl=1)
Close the Registry Editor, go back to the Chrome Policies tab, and click the Reload button in the upper left-hand portion of the screen.
The “true” value for the DeveloperToolsDisabled Policy Name should change to “false”.
Now you should be able to open DevTools again!