Follow my checklist to use the GA4 debug view report correctly every time:

1. Make sure GA4/GTM is not blocked due to browser or extension.
2. Check the settings of the antivirus software or Firewall.
3. Clear browser cache and delete cookies.
4. Check whether you can see the GA4 request URL.
5. Check the status of the GA4 request URL.
6. Check the status of the GTM request URL.
7. Check the configuration of your internal traffic data filter.
8. Make sure you have enabled the debug mode for your device.
9. Select the appropriate debug device.
10. Ensure events are marked as debug events.
11. Ensure server side tagging is working correctly.
12. Enable debug mode for both client side and server side containers.
13. Add Google Domains to CSP white list.
14. The debugview report can sometimes be buggy.

#1 Make sure GA4/GTM is not blocked due to browser or extension.

Make sure you are not using any browser (like ‘Brave‘) or extension (like ‘Google Analytics Opt-out add on‘, uBlock Origin, Adblock Plus, etc.) blocking GA4/GTM before you start debugging.

I like to disable all extensions that are not relevant to debugging.

Because sometimes, even the extensions not related to privacy protection can interfere with the debugging.

#2 Check the settings of the antivirus software or Firewall.

Check the settings of the antivirus software or Firewall you use before you start debugging.

It might be blocking GA4/GTM scripts. This step is often overlooked.

I once discovered that my antivirus software automatically installed a Chrome extension that was blocking Google Tag Manager.

#3 Clear browser cache and delete cookies.

Clear your browser cache and delete all the cookies.

So, if you previously opted out of tracking, it won’t negatively affect your debugging.

#4 Check whether you can see the GA4 request URL.

Navigate to the ‘Network’ tab of the developer console, refresh your web page and check whether you can see the GA4 request URL.

Search for ‘collect?v=2‘ to find the GA4 request URL.

If you don’t see the request URL, GA4 may not be working on your device.

#5 Check the status of the GA4 request URL.

Make sure that the status for the GA4 request URL is 200 or 204.

If you see the status ‘(blocked:other)‘, something is blocking GA4 on your device.

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#6 Check the status of the GTM request URL.

Filter the network request by searching for ‘gtm.js‘.

Make sure that the status for the GTM request URL is 200.

If you see the status ‘(blocked:other)‘, something is blocking GTM on your device.

#7 Check the configuration of your internal traffic data filter.

Check the configuration settings of your internal traffic data filter to make sure that your own IP address is not a part of the exclusion.

If it is, then temporarily deactivate your data filter and wait for at least 30 minutes before you start debugging.

Ideally, you should not be testing anything on a live GA4 property. Use the GA4 test property.

#8 Make sure you have enabled the debug mode for your device.

Many GA4 users don’t know that the debug view report does not work unless they have enabled the debug mode for their device (web or app).

You should enable the debug mode for your web device by using the GTM preview mode.

After enabling the extension, make sure to refresh the page you are debugging.

To enable debug mode for your IOS APP, use the following command line argument in Xcode: –FIRDebugEnabled

To enable debug mode for your Android APP, use the following command: adb shell setprop debug.firebase.analytics.app PACKAGE_NAME

Note: Events logged while in debug mode are not collected in your standard and exploration reports. They are also not included in your daily BigQuery export.

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#9 Select the appropriate debug device.

In GA4, when you are debugging data sent from a mobile app, you need to select the appropriate device from the ‘Debug Device’ drop-down menu in the DebugView report to filter the data being sent from that specific device, whether it’s an Apple (iOS) or Google (Android) device.

Usually, you don’t need to select a debug device when debugging web data.

But I have noticed that sometimes you can’t see your web data unless you select a debug device (preferably ‘Google’).

#10 Ensure events are marked as debug events.

GA4 DebugView is specifically designed to show events marked as debug events.

This marking is done by including a ‘debug_mode’ parameter in the event data sent to GA4.

If this parameter is not present or set to true, GA4 will not treat the event as a debug event and will not display it in the DebugView interface.

When using the client-side GA4 tag (e.g., via Google Tag Manager or directly in your website’s code), you can enable debug mode by appending ‘?gtm_debug=x’ to the URL (by enabling GTM preview mode) or by explicitly setting ‘debug_mode=true’ in the event payload.

This tells GA4 to treat the event as a debug event and display it in the DebugView report.

If you’re using server-side tagging, you must ensure that the ‘debug_mode’ parameter is correctly passed from the client-side and included in the events sent to GA4.

If the server-side container strips out or fails to include this parameter, the events will not be recognized as debug events and will not appear in the DebugView report.

If you want to check whether the debug mode parameter is sent along with an event, follow the steps below:

1. Open Google developer console and navigate to the ‘Network’ tab.
2. In the search field, enter ‘collect?v=2’ to filter out GA4 request URLs.
3. Refresh your web page where you are debugging.
4. Look for the ‘_dbg: 1‘ parameter in the payload, which proves that the debug mode parameter is sent along with the event.

#11 Ensure server-side tagging is working correctly.

Server side tagging can prevent the GA4 debugview report from working correctly.

In a server-side tagging setup, if the Client ID or User ID is not correctly captured from the client side, the DebugView report may not be able to correctly associate events with the correct session.

In DebugView, you might see events that are not linked to the correct user or session, or events might not appear at all if the IDs are missing.

If the debug mode parameter (‘_dbg’ parameter) is not correctly captured or transmitted from the client side to the server side, events will not be flagged as debug events, and the events not marked as debug events do not appear in the debugView report.

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#12 Enable debug mode for both client side and server side containers.

Both client-side and server-side containers must be in debug mode to track and view events correctly in the debugView report.

If the debug mode is not enabled on either side, events may not appear in DebugView report.

#13 Add Google Domains to CSP white list.

GA4 relies on various scripts hosted on Google domains (e.g., ‘www.google-analytics.com’, ‘analytics.google.com’, ‘googletagmanager.com’ etc.) to track and report events.

If your CSP (Content Security Policy) is too restrictive and doesn’t allow communication with Google’s domains, the browser can block any attempts to send data to GA4.

This means that events you expect to see in GA4 (including those in DebugView) won’t be sent at all, leading to missing data.

To prevent CSP from blocking GA4 event data, add relevant Google domains to your CSP whitelist.

This will allow your website to communicate with Google’s servers without being blocked by CSP rules.

#14 The debugview report can sometimes be buggy.

The debugview report can sometimes be buggy and does not work as it should, which is quite ironic for the tool specially meant for debugging.

So, you may not see your test data. Refreshing the report can help sometimes.

If you still do not see data in the DebugView report, it is very likely due to implementation errors.