# Mobile site detection should not rely on Safari in user agent
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/mobile-site-detection-should-not-rely-on-safari-in-user-agent/103341
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [3 december 2018 om 11:01 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/mobile-site-detection-should-not-rely-on-safari-in-user-agent/103341 "2018-12-03T11:01:55Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@mekentosj](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mekentosj)
#### Post date: [3 december 2018 om 11:01 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/mobile-site-detection-should-not-rely-on-safari-in-user-agent/103341/1 "2018-12-03T11:01:55Z")
Hi all,
Thanks for the fantastic piece of software that Discourse is, it’s incredible!
We are using Discourse for the community of our app [Agenda](https://agenda.com), our users love it. This is in part because we built it straight in the app using a WKWebView on mac and iOS. Unfortunately this gives a problem on iPhones as apparently discourse fails to detect it’s running on mobile.
Compare the following screenshots taken from Mobile Safari (left) and Agenda (right) on the same device:
The issue seems to be caused by Discourse parsing the User Agent string (left mobile safari, right Agenda using a stock WKWebView) for the word Safari or the word Mobile:
If I indeed tell the WKWebView to set the custom user agent to the same string as mobile Safari it works correctly. Unfortunately this is not a really great solution as it would force us to spoof an incorrect user agent of an incorrect safari version etc. I hope this can be fixed (for example by also checking for the word iPhone)…
Thanks and keep up the great work!
Alex
---
### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [3 december 2018 om 11:11 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/mobile-site-detection-should-not-rely-on-safari-in-user-agent/103341/2 "2018-12-03T11:11:07Z")
Unlikely, we have run into many complex issues with string based user agent detection in the past. If you want to 100% be seen as a mobile browser you need the word “mobile” in there from our perspective.
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### Author:  [@mekentosj](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mekentosj)
#### Post date: [3 december 2018 om 11:15 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/mobile-site-detection-should-not-rely-on-safari-in-user-agent/103341/3 "2018-12-03T11:15:35Z")
Nasty. FWIW if anyone hits the same issue, here’s the workaround I added, which I guess has to stay then:
```
// we need to force a user agent that is recognized by Discourse as mobile
webView.evaluateJavaScript("navigator.userAgent") { [weak self] result, error in
if let userAgent = result as? String, error == nil {
self?.webView.customUserAgent = userAgent + " Mobile"
}
}
```
---
### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [6 oktober 2021 om 19:03 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/mobile-site-detection-should-not-rely-on-safari-in-user-agent/103341/4 "2021-10-06T19:03:31Z")
---
### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [5 november 2021 om 19:03 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/mobile-site-detection-should-not-rely-on-safari-in-user-agent/103341/5 "2021-11-05T19:03:35Z")
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