GSC flags mobility errors & advises to test in Chrome Lighthouse, but Lighthouse doesn't show the same errors

[kessa]

GSC occasionally throws various mobile usability issues up such as "Content wider than screen" and/or "Clickable elements too close together" and whilst most of the time we've found these to be false positives (e.g. due to the bot failing to load style sheets, etc correctly), there are occasional instance where we feel it may be a legitimate issue worth further investigation.
However, currently the screenshot (and info) in the GSC live testing tool fails to convey any useful information.

To make matters worse, GSC now also displays the following message:

This tool will be retired on 1 December 2023. To test a page's mobile usability, use Chrome Lighthouse

However, when I perform the test in Chrome Lighthouse, it doesn't show either of those issues and we score well across the board for mobile tests (although there's always room for improvement :-) )

Therefore, we're unsure if GSC is flagging an issue when in fact there isn't a problem, or, whether Lighthouse is missing a test, or, whether Lighthouse uses a different test configuration (e.g. resolution, screen width) which means certain conditions are not being met which might otherwise trigger an issue which could be improved.

Any thoughts on whether this is something we can ignore, or, whether there's something in lighthouse which should be flagging errors but isn't?

[Note: I've submitted this to the "other" category as at this stage, I can't say if it's a bug or not, so more a topic for review/discussion/consideration as to how to provide consistent, and more useful insights when an error occurs]

[connorjclark]

I don't know how GSC implemented those checks, but if Lighthouse isn't failing for its tap-targets (SEO category) or viewport (Performance category) audits you can probably ignore this.

Can you provide the URL of the page GSC flags?

Anecdotally I've noticed similarly odd complaints of "Content wider than screen" for my personal domains (when AFAIK the viewport was configured correctly to Lighthouse's checks), but I never investigated much. Perhaps this is why it's being retired :P