check browser is safari javascript

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How to detect the user browser ( Safari, Chrome, IE, Firefox and Opera ) using JavaScript ?

The browser on which the current page is opening can be checked using JavaScript.

The userAgent property of the navigator object is used to return the user-agent header string sent by the browser. This user-agent string contains information about the browser by including certain keywords that may be tested for their presence.

The presence of a specific user-string can be detected using the indexOf() method. The indexOf() method is used to return the first occurrence of the specified string value in a string. If the value does not come up in the string, “-1” is returned.

The user-agent string of the browser is accessed using the navigator.userAgent property and then stored in a variable. The presence of the strings of a browser in this user-agent string is detected one by one.

As the indexOf() method would return a value that is greater than “-1” to denote a successful search, the “greater-than” operator is used to return a boolean value on whether the search was successful or not. This is done for all the following tests.

One additional check is required in the case of the Safari browser as the user-agent of the Chrome browser also includes the Safari browser’s user-agent. If both the user-agents of Chrome and Safari are in the user-agent, it means that the browser is Chrome, and hence the Safari browser value is discarded.

One additional check is also required in the case of this browser as the user-agent of the Opera browser also includes the Chrome browser’s user-agent. If both the user-agents of Chrome and Opera are in the user-agent, it means that the browser is Opera, and hence the Chrome browser value is discarded.

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Browser detection using the user agent

Serving different Web pages or services to different browsers is usually a bad idea. The Web is meant to be accessible to everyone, regardless of which browser or device they're using. There are ways to develop your website to progressively enhance itself based on the availability of features rather than by targeting specific browsers.

But browsers and standards are not perfect, and there are still some edge cases where detecting the browser is needed. Using the user agent to detect the browser looks simple, but doing it well is, in fact, a very hard problem. This document will guide you in doing this as correctly as possible.

Note: It's worth re-iterating: it's very rarely a good idea to use user agent sniffing. You can almost always find a better, more broadly compatible way to solve your problem!

Considerations before using browser detection

When considering using the user agent string to detect which browser is being used, your first step is to try to avoid it if possible. Start by trying to identify why you want to do it.

Look, or ask, in specialized forums: you're unlikely to be the first to hit this problem. Also, experts, or people with another point of view, can give you ideas for working around the bug. If the problem seems uncommon, it's worth checking if this bug has been reported to the browser vendor via their bug tracking system ( Mozilla ; WebKit ; Blink ; Opera ). Browser makers do pay attention to bug reports, and the analysis may hint about other workarounds for the bug.

Your site needs to use a specific Web feature that some browsers don't yet support, and you want to send those users to an older website with fewer features but that you know will work. This is the worst reason to use user agent detection because odds are eventually all the other browsers will catch up. In addition, it is not practical to test every one of the less popular browsers and test for those Web features. You should never do user agent sniffing. There is always the alternative of doing feature detection instead.

This is usually a bad practice, but there are some cases in which this is necessary. In these cases, you should first analyze your situation to be sure it's really necessary. Can you prevent it by adding some non-semantic <div> or <span> elements? The difficulty of successfully using user agent detection is worth a few disruptions to the purity of your HTML. Also, rethink your design: can you use progressive enhancement or fluid layouts to help remove the need to do this?

Avoiding user agent detection

If you want to avoid using user agent detection, you have options!

Feature detection is where you don't try to figure out which browser is rendering your page, but instead, you check to see if the specific feature you need is available. If it's not, you use a fallback. In those rare cases where behavior differs between browsers, instead of checking the user agent string, you should instead implement a test to detect how the browser implements the API and determine how to use it from that. An example of feature detection is as follows. In 2017, Chrome unflagged experimental lookbehind support in regular expressions , but no other browser supported it. So, you might have thought to do this:

The above code would have made several incorrect assumptions: First, it assumed that all user agent strings that include the substring "Chrome" are Chrome. UA strings are notoriously misleading. Then, it assumed that the lookbehind feature would always be available if the browser was Chrome. The agent might be an older version of Chrome, from before support was added, or (because the feature was experimental at the time) it could be a later version of Chrome that removed it. Most importantly, it assumed no other browsers would support the feature. Support could have been added to other browsers at any time, but this code would have continued choosing the inferior path.

Problems like these can be avoided by testing for support of the feature itself instead:

As the above code demonstrates, there is always a way to test browser support without user agent sniffing. There is never any reason to check the user agent string for this.

Lastly, the above code snippets bring about a critical issue with cross-browser coding that must always be taken into account. Don't unintentionally use the API you are testing for in unsupported browsers. This may sound obvious and simple, but sometimes it is not. For example, in the above code snippets, using lookbehind in short-regexp notation (for example, /reg/igm) will cause a parser error in unsupported browsers. Thus, in the above example, you would use new RegExp("(?<=look_behind_stuff)"); instead of /(?<=look_behind_stuff)/ , even in the lookbehind supported section of your code.

This design technique involves developing your website in 'layers', using a bottom-up approach, starting with a simpler layer and improving the capabilities of the site in successive layers, each using more features.

This is a top-down approach in which you build the best possible site using all the features you want, then tweak it to make it work on older browsers. This can be harder to do, and less effective, than progressive enhancement, but may be useful in some cases.

Arguably the most common use and misuse of user agent sniffing is to detect if the device is a mobile device. However, people too often overlook what they are really after. People use user agent sniffing to detect if the users' device is touch-friendly and has a small screen so they can optimize their website accordingly. While user agent sniffing can sometimes detect these, not all devices are the same: some mobile devices have big screen sizes, some desktops have a small touchscreen, some people use smart TV's which are an entirely different ballgame altogether, and some people can dynamically change the width and height of their screen by flipping their tablet on its side! So, user agent sniffing is definitely not the way to go. Thankfully, there are much better alternatives. Use Navigator.maxTouchPoints to detect if the user's device has a touchscreen. Then, default back to checking the user agent screen only if (!("maxTouchPoints" in navigator)) { /*Code here*/} . Using this information of whether the device has a touchscreen, do not change the entire layout of the website just for touch devices: you will only create more work and maintenance for yourself. Rather, add in touch conveniences such as bigger, more easily clickable buttons (you can do this using CSS by increasing the font size). Here is an example of code that increases the padding of #exampleButton to 1em on mobile devices.

As for the screen size, use window.innerWidth and window.addEventListener("resize", () => { /*refresh screen size dependent things*/ }). What you want to do for screen size is not slash off information on smaller screens. That will only annoy people because it will force them to use the desktop version. Rather, try to have fewer columns of information in a longer page on smaller screens while having more columns with a shorter page on larger screen sizes. This effect can be easily achieved using CSS flexboxes , sometimes with floats as a partial fallback.

Also try to move less relevant/important information down to the bottom and group the page's content together meaningfully. Although it is off-topic, perhaps the following detailed example might give you insights and ideas that persuade you to forgo user agent sniffing. Let us imagine a page composed of boxes of information; each box is about a different feline breed or canine breed. Each box has an image, an overview, and a historical fun fact. The pictures are kept to a maximum reasonable size even on large screens. For the purposes of grouping the content meaningfully, all the cat boxes are separated from all the dog boxes such that the cat and dog boxes are not intermixed together. On a large screen, it saves space to have multiple columns to reduce the space wasted to the left and to the right of the pictures. The boxes can be separated into multiple columns via two equally fair method. From this point on, we shall assume that all the dog boxes are at the top of the source code, that all the cat boxes are at the bottom of the source code, and that all these boxes have the same parent element. There a single instance of a dog box immediately above a cat box, of course. The first method uses horizontal Flexboxes to group the content such that when the page is displayed to the end user, all the dogs boxes are at the top of the page and all the cat boxes are lower on the page. The second method uses a Column layout and resents all the dogs to the left and all the cats to the right. Only in this particular scenario, it is appropriate to provide no fallback for the flexboxes/multicolumns, resulting in a single column of very wide boxes on old browsers. Also consider the following. If more people visit the webpage to see the cats, then it might be a good idea to put all the cats higher in the source code than the dogs so that more people can find what they are looking for faster on smaller screens where the content collapses down to one column.

Next, always make your code dynamic. The user can flip their mobile device on its side, changing the width and height of the page. Or, there might be some weird flip-phone-like device thing in the future where flipping it out extends the screen. Do not be the developer having a headache over how to deal with the flip-phone-like device thing. Never be satisfied with your webpage until you can open up the dev tools side panel and resize the screen while the webpage looks smooth, fluid, and dynamically resized. The simplest way to do this is to separate all the code that moves content around based on screen size to a single function that is called when the page is loaded and at each resize event thereafter. If there is a lot calculated by this layout function before it determines the new layout of the page, then consider debouncing the event listener such that it is not called as often. Also note that there is a huge difference between the media queries (max-width: 25em) , not all and (min-width: 25em) , and (max-width: 24.99em) : (max-width: 25em) excludes (max-width: 25em) , whereas not all and (min-width: 25em) includes (max-width: 25em) . (max-width: 24.99em) is a poor man's version of not all and (min-width: 25em) : do not use (max-width: 24.99em) because the layout might break on very high font sizes on very high definition devices in the future. Always be very deliberate about choosing the right media query and choosing the right >=, <=, >, or < in any corresponding JavaScript because it is very easy to get these mixed up, resulting in the website looking wonky right at the screen size where the layout changes. Thus, thoroughly test the website at the exact widths/heights where layout changes occur to ensure that the layout changes occur properly.

Making the best of user agent sniffing

After reviewing all of the above better alternatives to user agent sniffing, there are still some potential cases where user agent sniffing is appropriate and justified.

One such case is using user agent sniffing as a fallback when detecting if the device has a touch screen. See the Mobile Device Detection section for more information.

Another such case is for fixing bugs in browsers that do not automatically update. Webkit (on iOS) is a perfect example. Apple forces all of the browsers on IOS to use Webkit internally, thus the user has no way to get a better more updated browser on older devices. Most bugs can be detected, but some bugs take more effort to detect than others. In such cases, it might be beneficial to use user agent sniffing to save on performance. For example, Webkit 6 has a bug whereby when the device orientation changes, the browser might not fire MediaQueryList listeners when it should. To overcome this bug, observe the code below.

Which part of the user agent contains the information you are looking for?

As there is no uniformity of the different part of the user agent string, this is the tricky part.

Browser Name and version

When people say they want "browser detection", often they actually want "rendering engine detection". Do you actually want to detect Firefox, as opposed to SeaMonkey, or Chrome as opposed to Chromium? Or do you actually want to see if the browser is using the Gecko or the WebKit rendering engine? If this is what you need, see further down the page.

Most browsers set the name and version in the format BrowserName/VersionNumber . But as the name is not the only information in a user agent string that is in that format, you can not discover the name of the browser, you can only check if the name you are looking for exists. But note that some browsers are lying: Chrome for example reports both as Chrome and Safari. So to detect Safari you have to check for the Safari string and the absence of the Chrome string, Chromium often reports itself as Chrome too or Seamonkey sometimes reports itself as Firefox.

Also, pay attention not to use a simple regular expression on the BrowserName, user agents also contain strings outside the Keyword/Value syntax. Safari & Chrome contain the string 'like Gecko', for instance.

[1] Safari gives two version numbers: one technical in the Safari/xyz token, and one user-friendly in a Version/xyz token.

Of course, there is absolutely no guarantee that another browser will not hijack some of these things (like Chrome hijacked the Safari string in the past). That's why browser detection using the user agent string is unreliable and should be done only with the check of the version number (hijacking of past versions is less likely).

Rendering engine

As seen earlier, in most cases, looking for the rendering engine is a better way to go. This will help to not exclude lesser known browsers. Browsers sharing a common rendering engine will display a page in the same way: it is often a fair assumption that what will work in one will work in the other.

There are three active major rendering engines: Blink, Gecko, and WebKit. As sniffing the rendering engines names is common, a lot of user agents added other rendering names to trigger detection. It is therefore important to pay attention not to trigger false-positives when detecting the rendering engine.

Rendering engine version

Most rendering engines put the version number in the RenderingEngine/VersionNumber token, with the notable exception of Gecko. Gecko puts the Gecko version number in the comment part of the User Agent after the rv: string. From Gecko 14 for the mobile version and Gecko 17 for the desktop version, it also puts this value in the Gecko/version token (previous version put there the build date, then a fixed date called the GeckoTrail).

The Operating System is given in most User Agent strings (although not web-focused platforms like Firefox OS), but the format varies a lot. It is a fixed string between two semicolons, in the comment part of the User Agent. These strings are specific for each browser. They indicate the OS, but also often its version and information on the relying hardware (32 or 64 bits, or Intel/PPC for Mac).

Like in all cases, these strings may change in the future, one should use them only in conjunction with the detection of already released browsers. A technological survey must be in place to adapt the script when new browser versions are coming out.

Mobile, Tablet or Desktop

The most common reason to perform user agent sniffing is to determine which type of device the browser runs on. The goal is to serve different HTML to different device types.

• Never assume that a browser or a rendering engine only runs on one type of device. Especially don't make different defaults for different browsers or rendering engines.
• Never use the OS token to define if a browser is on mobile, tablet or desktop. The OS may run on more than one type of device (for example, Android runs on tablets as well as phones).

The following table summarizes the way common browser vendors indicate that their browsers are running on a mobile device:

In summary, we recommend looking for the string Mobi anywhere in the User Agent to detect a mobile device.

Note: If the device is large enough that it's not marked with Mobi , you should serve your desktop site (which, as a best practice, should support touch input anyway, as more desktop machines are appearing with touchscreens).

4 Ways to Detect Browser With Javascript (Simple Examples)

Welcome to a tutorial on how to detect the browser with Javascript. Have some scripts that you only want to run on a certain browser? Maybe limit some features, do some compatibility checks?

The common methods used to detect the browser in Javascript are:

• Extract information from the user agent, check if it contains the browser’s name. For example, to check for Chrome browsers – if (navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Chrome") != -1)
• Use a detection library such as Bowser .
• Detect the CSS vendor prefix – Check if the browser supports WebKit , Moz , or MS .
• Browser duck typing – Check for unique features that each browser has.

Yep, there are actually no fixed reliable ways to detect a browser. So just how does each method work, and which is the best? Read on to find out!

TLDR – QUICK SLIDES

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Fullscreen Mode – Click Here

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Browser detection.

All right, let us now get started with the ways to detect the browser in Javascript.

METHOD 1) READING THE USER AGENT

The user agent is a piece of information that the browser sends to the server. If you are wondering how it looks like, here is an example from Google Chrome:

So yes, it contains general information like the browser, operating system, and other software technologies. We can use this for browser detection, and it is as simple as checking if the browser name is stuck somewhere inside the block of text. But take note – Users can choose to hide the user agent, and it is not a totally reliable method.

METHOD 2) USING A DETECTION LIBRARY

There are a lot of detection libraries, but the one we are using is called Bowser . As you can see, this one actually relies on the user agent again. It simply parses the information to make things more convenient, but it has the same old problem – Not totally reliable.

METHOD 3) CSS PREFIX DETECTION

Credits to David Walsh for this snippet on how to detect the vendor prefix :

For you guys who do not know, each browser has its own unique set of experimental technologies. To use the experimental and non-standard CSS properties, we have to attach a prefix to the property accordingly:

• WebKit – For Chrome, Safari, Opera, and Edge.
• Moz – Mozilla Firefox.
• MS – Old Microsoft Internet Explorer and Edge.
• O – Older versions of Opera.

So yes, we can detect which CSS prefix the browser uses, and determine which engine the browser runs on. While this is more reliable in the sense that users cannot turn it off, there is also no way to tell which browser it is exactly.

P.S. In Jan 2020, Edge has become Chromium-based. The older versions retain MS but later versions are WebKit .

METHOD 4) DUCK TYPING

Credits to this post on StackOverflow .

Duck typing is simply detecting the “odd quirks” and “unique features” of each browser. For example, window.opr and window.opera is unique to Opera, and window.chrome is unique to Chrome. While this is probably one of the most reliable methods, it takes a lot of time to figure out what is unique to each browser – A real pain to keep this list updated.

DOWNLOAD & NOTES

Here is the download link to the example code, so you don’t have to copy-paste everything.

SORRY FOR THE ADS...

But someone has to pay the bills, and sponsors are paying for it. I insist on not turning Code Boxx into a "paid scripts" business, and I don't "block people with Adblock". Every little bit of support helps.

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EXAMPLE CODE DOWNLOAD

Click here for the source code on GitHub gist , just click on “download zip” or do a git clone. I have released it under the MIT license, so feel free to build on top of it or use it in your own project.

EXTRA BITS & LINKS

That’s all for this tutorial, and here is a small section on some extras and links that may be useful to you.

USER AGENT IS NOT ACCURATE!

Please take note that the user agent can be easily tweaked with development tools and plugins. Yes, it is not 100% accurate, users can hide it for security purposes, or even change it to something else for testing.

WHICH IS THE BEST? FEATURE DETECTION.

Personally, I will say that none of the above detection methods are reliable. If you are trying to do backward or cross-platform compatibility, then browser detection doesn’t make any sense. Do feature detection instead. I personally use a library called Modernizr , and for example, if we need to check the user’s physical location via GPS, we check for support for the Geolocation API.

Download your customized Modernizr build, then just include in your script:

I hope this makes more sense, we just check if the required feature is available; It is very inefficient to try to figure out which browser, which version is capable, and which is not.

LINKS & REFERENCES

• List of user agents all around the world.
• Browser detection using user agent – MDN
• Vendor Prefix – MDN
• Detecting Vendor Prefix – David Walsh

TUTORIAL VIDEO

INFOGRAPHIC CHEAT SHEET

Thank you for reading, and we have come to the end of this guide. I hope that it has helped you with your project, and if you want to share anything with this guide, please feel free to comment below. Good luck and happy coding!

6 thoughts on “4 Ways to Detect Browser With Javascript (Simple Examples)”

Jeez… HOW MANY adverts are you going to litter this page with ?! Anyway, in 2021, there’s no point using “navigator.userAgent”, they all pretend to be all kinds of browsers. And for option 3, nope, Microsoft Edge proudly says it’s “webkit”, which your code thinks is “Chrome/Safari or Opera” As for option 4, your code reckons Microsoft Edge was “blink”, and Chrome just didn’t run this code at all. Time to give up, me thinks…

Hi! It seems like this is your first time on the Internet. This human worked hard for years to write hundreds of guides, and ads are keeping it free for everyone. Feel free to f*** off and buy books if this arrangement does not work for you.

Anyway, Edge has become “webkit” ever since it adopted Chromium. User Agent can be changed or removed by the user. Will update this guide eventually, but stick with feature detection if possible.

I rarely post in public forums like this, but just wanted to say: great response to that idiot, Mike. I also rarely advocate for violence, but I wouldn’t mind if someone slapped him across his stupid face. Anyway, keep up the great work, and thank you for sharing all this info. People like you, who selflessly share all this info with the general public, have helped me learn so much through the years.

I think Modernizr might be the way to go for me.

Glad it helped!

In your initial test code for using the user agent, shouldn’t the safari check look for the presence of Safari and the absence of Chrome to work well, since you point out that the Chrome header contains the word Safari?

Yes, that will work too. But I will stick with feature detection unless it’s really for targeting the specific group of users on Safari.

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how to detect safari browser in javascript

Answered on: Saturday 26 August, 2023 / Duration: 22 min read

Programming Language: JavaScript , Popularity : 8/10

Solution 1:

To detect the Safari browser in JavaScript, you can use the navigator.userAgent property, which contains information about the user agent string of the browser. The user agent string typically includes information about the browser, its version, and the operating system being used.

Here's how you can detect Safari browser in JavaScript:

Let's break down the code:

1. We start by creating a regular expression ( /^((?!chrome|android).)*safari/i ) that checks if the user agent string contains the word "safari" but not "chrome" or "android". This is done using negative lookahead assertions (?!chrome|android) to exclude those browsers.

2. The regular expression is then tested against the navigator.userAgent string using the .test() method.

3. The result is stored in the isSafari variable, which will be true if the user agent string matches the regular expression and false otherwise.

Now, let's see some code examples and outputs to better understand how this works:

Example 1: When running in Safari:

Example 2: When running in Chrome:

Example 3: When running on an Android device:

In these examples, we use console.log() to print the value of isSafari to the console. If isSafari is true , it means the code is running in Safari, and if it's false , it means it's running in a different browser.

Note that user agent strings can be manipulated or changed by users or browser extensions, so this method may not be 100% reliable. It's always a good idea to consider other methods for feature detection or to use a well-established library like Modernizr for more accurate browser detection.

Solution 2:

To detect the Safari browser in JavaScript, you can use the navigator.userAgent property along with regular expressions to match the Safari browser's user agent string. Here's an example code snippet that demonstrates how to detect Safari and get its version:

Here are some possible outputs:

1. If the user is using Safari version 14.0:

2. If the user is using Chrome or any other browser:

Note that user agent strings can be modified, so this method may not always be reliable. It's always recommended to use feature detection instead of browser detection whenever possible.

Solution 3:

There are several ways to detect the Safari browser in JavaScript, here are a few methods:

1. User Agent String Method:

The user agent string is a piece of information that is sent along with every HTTP request, it contains information about the browser, operating system, device, and other details. You can check the user agent string to see if it includes the keyword "Safari" to determine if the current browser is Safari.

2. Browser Object Method:

You can also use the navigator.browser property to detect Safari. This method is less reliable than checking the user agent string as it can be spoofed or modified by the user.

3. Feature Detection Method:

Another way to detect Safari is by testing for the presence of certain features that are specific to Safari. For example, you can check if the orientation property is supported, which is not available in all browsers but is available in Safari.

4. Polyfill Method:

If you want to support older versions of Safari that don't have the orientation property, you can use a polyfill to add support for it. Then you can use the feature detection method above.

It's worth noting that feature detection is generally considered a more robust and future-proof way of detecting browsers compared to user agent sniffing. However, in some cases, user agent sniffing may still be necessary, especially when dealing with legacy browsers.

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How to detect browser in JavaScript [Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Edge , MS IE]?

JavaScript detect browser name: Here in this article we learn how to detect browser in javascript. I had a requirement where based on browser I have to display something different. In short, I have to detect firefox browser in javascript and display the respective message to the user. Same if the user browser is chrome, then display respective message. 

Basically we write code in JavaScript to check user browser. Which help answer to our question .i.e How do I know if I am using IE or Chrome in JavaScript?

Here we are detecting 5 major browsers and that are  Chrome ,  Firefox ,  Safari ,  Opera ,  MS Edge . And we are showing 2 different approach to detect browser at client-side i.e using userAgent.match and userAgent.indexOf with live demo example. Although based on different browser display different content is not good practise.

Steps to detect browser name in JavaScript

• HTML markup to display browser name.
• JavaScript code to detect browser using useragent.match
• JavaScript code to detect browser using useragent. indexOf

HTML markup to display browser name

First, we create a new index.html page and add the below markup. Here we add an h1 tag, which will display the browser name on page-load.

Approach 1: JavaScript code to detect browser name using userAgent.match

To detect user browser information we use the navigator.userAgent property. And then we match with the browser name to identify the user browser.

JS code to identify browser is as written below:

Now call this JS function on page load, and this will display the user browser name on page load.

Approach 2: JavaScript code to detect browser using userAgent.IndexOf

Here in the 2nd approach we again using navigator.userAgent with indexof to figure out the browser name.

JS code as written below:

With the above code will be able to detect chrome browser, also with approach 2, we are able to detect MS Edge browser chromium based. By checking  trident  we were able to detect MS Internet Explorer browser IE in javascript.

Conclusion: Hereby using the  navigator.userAgent  we were successfully able to detect Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari, and Opera browser in Javascript. Add display the browser name on page load. It's in pure javascript, as we didn't use any external JS library for the browser detection.  

Thank you for reading, pls keep visiting this blog and share this in your network. Also, I would love to hear your opinions down in the comments.

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How to detect Chrome and Safari browser with JavaScript?

• Post author By John Au-Yeung
• Post date July 23, 2022
• No Comments on How to detect Chrome and Safari browser with JavaScript?

Sometimes, we want to detect Chrome and Safari browser with JavaScript.

In this article, we’ll look at how to detect Chrome and Safari browser with JavaScript.

To detect Chrome and Safari browser with JavaScript, we use the user agent and vendor strings.

For instance, we write

to check for Chrome with /Chrome/.test(navigator.userAgent) && /Google Inc/.test(navigator.vendor) .

And we check for Safari with /Safari/.test(navigator.userAgent) && /Apple Computer/.test(navigator.vendor) .

userAgent is the user agent string.

And vendor is the vendor string.

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Web developer specializing in React, Vue, and front end development.

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How to detect the user browser with JavaScript

You can check which browser the user is running using plain JavaScript.

To detect the user browser, you need to analyze the property userAgent of the object navigator .

If you want to do something specific, for example, provide a polifill for a regular expression when the browser is Safari, you do this:

On the other hand, if you want to do something for all browsers but Chrome , you check if the userAgent doesn’t include your search string:

Using indexOf and toLowerCase

As an alternative to includes you can also use the indexOf method. If it returns -1 , this means that the search string wasn’t found.

If you’re not sure how exactly the user browser is spelled, you can try using the toLowerCase function on the navigator.userAgent .

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Get Browser name (Chrome, Firefox, etc) and Version in JS

Last updated: Apr 4, 2024 Reading time · 5 min

# Table of Contents

• Get Browser name (Chrome, Firefox, Safari) in JavaScript
• Get Browser name (Chrome, Firefox, Safari) using String.includes() in JavaScript
• Get the Browser Name and Version in JavaScript using Bowser

# Get Browser name (Chrome, Firefox, Safari) in JavaScript

To get the browser name (e.g. Chrome, Firefox, Safar) in JavaScript:

• Use the navigator.userAgent property to get the user agent string for the current browser.
• Use the RegExp.test() method to check if a regular expression matches the user agent string for each browser.

Here is the HTML for the example.

And here is the related JavaScript code.

You can start a basic development server by opening your terminal in the same directory as the index.html and index.js files and issuing the following command.

If I load the example in Chrome, I get the following output.

And here is a screenshot of opening the page in Firefox.

The navigator.userAgent property returns the user agent string for the current browser.

The name of the browser is located toward the end of the user agent string (e.g. Chrome or Firefox).

We used the RegExp.test() method to check if the user agent string contains specific substrings.

The forward slashes mark the start and the end of the regular expressions / / .

The pipe | symbol means "OR", e.g. chrome or chromium or crios .

The i flag stands for ignore and does a case-insensitive search in string.

If the regex is matched in the string, we return the name of the corresponding browser.

# Get Browser name (Chrome, Firefox, Safari) using String.includes() in JavaScript

You can also use the String.includes() method to get the browser name in JavaScript.

Here is an example that uses the method and some internal browser-specific properties.

Here is a screenshot of using the function in Chrome.

And here is a screenshot of using the function in Firefox.

And, here is an example of using the function in Opera.

We created reusable functions that check for each browser name.

The functions use the navigator.userAgent property and some internal, browser-specific properties.

Each function returns true if the browser is of the expected type and false otherwise.

We used the String.toLowerCase() method to convert the user agent string to lowercase before using String.includes() to check if it contains specific substrings in a case-insensitive manner.

# Get the Browser Name and Version in JavaScript using Bowser

You can also use the popular Bowser NPM package to get the browser name and version.

Notice that we load the bowser package using a CDN.

Here is the related JavaScript file.

The browser.getBrowser() method returns an object that contains the name and version properties.

The name property stores the name of the current browser and the version property stores the version of the browser.

Here is a screenshot of the results in Google Chrome.

And here is a screenshot of the output in Firefox.

There is also a browser.getBrowserName() method.

The example above uses a CDN script to load the Bowser library, however, you can also use the ES modules import syntax .

Here is the updated HTML file.

Notice that we set the type attribute of the script tag to module .

Here is the related JavaScript code.

The example uses an ES modules import statement to import the bowser module.

The remainder of the code is the same.

The bowser package also provides you with additional information, e.g. the operating system, the platform and the engine.

The bowser.parse() method takes the user agent string and returns an object that contains information about the browser, the operating system, the platform and the engine.

# Additional Resources

You can learn more about the related topics by checking out the following tutorials:

• How to Detect Browser Back Button event in JavaScript
• Edit and replay XHR (HTTP) requests in Chrome & Firefox
• Chrome: How to Copy an Object or Array from the Console tab

Borislav Hadzhiev

Web Developer

Copyright © 2024 Borislav Hadzhiev

How to Detect Browser Version in JavaScript

• JavaScript Howtos
• How to Detect Browser Version in …

Use the userAgent to Detect Browser Version in JavaScript

Why browser version detection should be avoided in javascript, another option to detect browser version in javascript.

There are many devices in today’s world with various screen sizes.

But the problem is that not all the devices can support various features implemented on the website.

To detect the browser version and browser name, we can use the userAgent in JavaScript.

The navigator is the property of the window object.

To access the userAgent , you can use navigator.userAgent or use object destructuring to get the userAgent from the navigator.

Using the includes method will take a string as a parameter to return it. This string helps in detecting the browser as follows.

The browser version and its name are present at the end of the string provided by the userAgent .

You can run the code below if you want to get the end part, i.e., the browser version and name and not the entire string.

All browser displays the same output. It is because all are built on chromium.

It’s not a good idea to detect the browser name and its version using userAgent because it’s not 100% accurate.

Every browser sets this data differently, and all browsers do not follow a particular standard.

Feature detection in a browser-

It can be a better idea to detect whether a particular browser supports a particular feature or not. And based on whether it supports a feature or not, you can take further action and write your code accordingly.

Progressively developing a website-

Following a design technique, you develop a website for smaller devices first with fewer features and move your way up to the top while increasing the features. It is known as a bottom-up approach.

Building for modern browsers-

Develop a full-fledged website with all the features for modern browsers and then tweak some changes so that it is supported on older browsers. It can be difficult to implement and less effective than the progressive or bottom-up approach.

Sahil is a full-stack developer who loves to build software. He likes to share his knowledge by writing technical articles and helping clients by working with them as freelance software engineer and technical writer on Upwork.

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Get Browser Type and Version in JavaScript

Introduction

In this Byte, we'll see how to detect a user's browser type and version using JavaScript. This might seem like it should be a trivial task, but that's not always the case. It can be quite beneficial when creating responsive and user-friendly web applications. We'll be looking into why it's important to identify a browser's type and version, and then we'll delve into the methods to get the browser type and version.

Why Detect Browser Name and Version?

The answer lies in the varying support for different web technologies across different browsers and their versions. For instance, certain features of HTML5, CSS3, or JavaScript may not be supported or might behave differently in different browsers. By detecting the browser name and version, developers can provide alternative solutions or warn users about potential compatibility issues.

Or maybe you want to provide a link to a user for a browser extension. How will you know which extension provider to link to? Firefox Add-ons, or the Chrome Web Store?

Getting Browser Name and Version in JavaScript

There are a couple different ways to get the browser name and version in JavaScript. We'll be looking at two methods. The first method involves the use of the navigator.userAgent property, and the second method uses a third party library to do the work for you.

Method 1: Using Navigator.userAgent Property

The navigator.userAgent property in JavaScript returns a string that represents the browser's user-agent header. This string contains information about the browser's name, version, and other details.

Here's an example of how you can use this property to detect the browser name and version:

If you run this code in your browser's console, it will print out a string that looks something like this:

This string tells us that the browser is Chrome and its version is 58.0.3029.110. However, parsing this string to get the exact browser name and version can be a bit tricky due to the varying formats of user-agent strings across different browsers. Usually, developers use regular expressions to parse this string and extract the required information.

Note: While the navigator.userAgent property provides a quick and easy way to detect the browser name and version, it's not always reliable. Some browsers allow users to change the user-agent string, which can lead to incorrect detection.

Method 2: Using Browser Detection Libraries

In some cases, parsing the navigator.userAgent string can become quite complex, especially when you need to detect a wide range of browser types and versions. This is where browser detection libraries can be a lot of help. They do the heavy lifting for you, making it easier to identify the browser, its version, OS, and more. One popular library is ua-parser-js .

Let's see how we can use this library to get the browser name and version:

In this code, we first import the ua-parser-js library. We then create a new parser instance and call the getResult() method to get the browser information. The output is an object containing the browser name and version.

There are other libraries that perform browser detection by checking which features are present, which can be a good alternative if you suspect the UA has been changed, but this is also a difficult method since browser features are constantly changing.

Potential Issues with Browser Detection

While browser detection can be a useful tool, it's not without its potential pitfalls. One of the primary issues, as we've mentioned, is that the navigator.userAgent string can be easily spoofed or altered. This means that relying solely on this string for browser detection may lead to inaccurate results.

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Another issue is that browser detection can lead to code complexity. If you have to write different code for different browsers, your code base can quickly become cluttered and harder to maintain. This is why feature detection is often recommended over browser detection, depending on your use-case.

Use Cases for Browser Detection

Despite its potential issues, there are quite a few valid use cases for browser detection. Let's explore some of them.

Web Optimization

One of the most common use cases for browser detection is web optimization. By knowing the type and version of the user's browser, you can customize your website to provide the best possible experience for that browser.

For example, you might use browser detection to serve different versions of your website's CSS or JavaScript files. If the user is on an older browser that doesn't support certain features, you can serve a simpler, more compatible version of your site.

In this example, we're using the ua-parser-js library to detect if the user is on an older version of Internet Explorer. If they are, we serve a simpler version of the JavaScript file. If they're on a different browser, we serve the regular JavaScript file.

Remember, while browser detection can be a useful tool for web optimization, it's not a silver bullet. Always consider the potential issues and use it judiciously.

User Experience Enhancement

In the world of web development, user experience (UX) is king. It's all about creating a smooth, intuitive, and enjoyable experience for your users, right? This is where browser detection can come into play.

Let's imagine you've developed a feature that leverages the latest Web APIs. However, these APIs aren't supported by all browsers. Instead of leaving your users with older browsers in the dark (and potentially frustrated), you can use browser detection to provide them an alternative, but still pleasant, experience.

Here's an example. Suppose you've implemented a feature using the Web Speech API, which is not supported in Internet Explorer.

In this code, if the user's browser supports the Web Speech API, we go ahead and use it. If not, we provide an alternative method that's compatible with their browser. This way, no user is left behind and everyone gets to enjoy your site, regardless of the browser they're using.

Note: Always remember to test your site thoroughly on various browsers after implementing browser detection. This will ensure that your users get the best possible experience, regardless of their browser type and version.

In this Byte, we've explored how to detect a user's browser type and version in JavaScript. We've seen how we can use the navigator.userAgent property, as well as browser detection libraries, to achieve this. We've also discussed potential issues with browser detection and highlighted some of its use cases, particularly in enhancing user experience.

While browser detection can be a useful tool, it's not always the best solution. Whenever possible, use feature detection to see if the browser supports whatever feature you're wanting to use. However, in cases where browser-specific quirks or bugs come into play, or when dealing with unsupported features, browser detection can be a lifesaver.

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How to find the user’s browser name using JavaScript

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There are times we need to know the user's browser in order to display some specific features, such as ApplePay in the Safari browser.

What is a user browser?

A user browser is a software application that lets users access web pages on the internet. It is commonly used to access information online. Examples of browsers include Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Opera, and Internet Explorer.

Steps in detecting a user's browser

To detect a user browser, we can make use of the global window object available in the browser. The window object contains a navigator object which can be accessed with or without referencing the window, because it can stand alone and is globally accessible. The userAgent property in the navigator object is a long string that contains information about the operating system and browser.

Here is the result of the userAgent string on our browser:

Coding example

Here is an example showing how to detect and display the user's browser name:

Code explanation

Click the "HTML" tab as we take a walkthrough.

Lines 10–11: In the function getBrowserName , we store the navigator.userAgent in a variable called browserInfo .

Line 12: A variable named browser is defined.

Lines 13–25: Then, we use the if-else conditions to check if the browserInfo variable contains a string specific to a browser. In this example, the string method includes is used to perform the check on the string, but indexOf , regex match , and other string methods can also be used. When the condition is true, the variable browser is set to the respective browser name.

Line 26: The browser name is returned from the getBrowserName function.

Lines 29–33: The browser name is set in HTML and displays the information on the webpage (as shown in the output tab).

Some browsers such as Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Opera also display another browser name in their userAgent string. For example, Google Chrome shows Safari, Microsoft Edge shows both Google Chrome and Safari, and Opera shows Google Chrome. Hence, a strict check needs to be done for these browsers. If the if-else statements are used, they need to be well ordered, as shown above, to avoid getting wrong results.

Here is an example of a strict check for Safari:

Line 1: A condition is used to detect if the navigator.userAgent string does not include Google Chrome, but includes Safari.

Line 2: If the condition above is true, print Browser is Safari .

Line 4: If the condition above is false, print Browser is not Safari .

Note: It is advised to use a feature-driven detection approach based on the browser capability, since the userAgent property might not be reliable, because it is configurable and can be turned off by the user.

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Rumor: iOS 18 to include new ‘Safari browsing assistant’ AI feature

iOS 18 is rumored to include a number of new artificial intelligence features spread across the entire operating system. A new rumor today suggests that one of those features could be “Safari browsing assistant.”

As for what that means, we are left to speculation for now…

Safari browsing assistant rumored for iOS 18

In a post on social media today, code sleuth Nicolás Álvarez shared two new features in the works at Apple:

• Safari browsing assistant
• Encrypted visual search

According to Álvarez, both of these features use Apple’s Private Relay infrastructure to send data back to Apple. Álvarez speculates that this is a privacy-preserving practice on Apple’s part, so it doesn’t learn user IP addresses. Of note, iCloud Private Relay is currently only available to iCloud+ subscribers.

( Update : Álvarez says that it’s not actually iCloud Private Relay but rather an “Oblivious HTTP gateway.”)

Apple already offers different visual search-style features, integrated into Spotlight and the Photos app. It’s not explicitly clear if “encrypted visual search” is just a more secure version of existing features or something new entirely.

The more interesting thing here is the “Safari browsing assistant” feature. Based solely on the name, this feature sounds like it will bring AI features of some sort to Safari, similar to what other browsers already offer. Microsoft’s Edge browser, for example, has different Copilot AI features built in. Arc from The Browser Company also combines a variety of AI features with web browsing.

Bloomberg reports that Apple is likely to team up with a company such as Google to power some of its new AI features. We aren’t expecting any announcement from Apple about a partnership until WWDC at the earliest.

iOS 18 is expected to be announced at WWDC, which kicks off on June 10. Check out our in-depth guide for more details on what to expect from AI in iOS 18 .

Álvarez has also reported that iOS 18 will bring two new features to Apple Maps on iPhone, including custom route creation and new topographic maps.

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