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Open icLens

Inspect your first canister

In five minutes you’ll open a real canister on the Internet Computer, read what anyone can see about it, and save it to your list. You don’t need to sign in, and nothing you do here changes the canister.

  1. Open a canister. On Home, paste a canister ID and press Enter.

  2. Read the public facts. At the top you see:

    • Code: the module the canister runs, and whether an NNS proposal installed it.
    • Controllers: who can change it.
    • Subnet: where it runs.
    • Cycles and memory: private to its controllers unless it makes them public.

  3. Watch live calls. Open Timeline and start watching calls. You see requests reach the canister as they happen.

  4. Save it. Choose Add to… and save it to this browser. It now appears on Home. You can save a canister if you’re allowed to read its status: you control it, you’re a status viewer, or its status is public.

  5. Look around. Open Discover to see the subnet your canister runs on, and the rest of the network.

What’s next

Section titled “What’s next”