Detect Mobile User Agents & Browsers
Now supporting Apple iPad!
Helping detect and better serve mobile browsers
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Web site last updated: Monday 16th August 2010
Function last updated: Sunday 25th April 2010
This PHP function lets you choose how to manage your mobile visitors, they can be redirected to a page built for mobiles or you can use it to decide which markup language and stylesheet to show that user.
It's main function is to answer this question:
Is this visitor to my website using a mobile phone or PC?
Download Code
Download the code, unzip the archive then upload it to your website. Then view the usage guide or use the function generator to build a custom function to suit you and your mobile visitors.
Usage guide
It's not rocket science, it's easy to use!
But you need to understand at least basic PHP to get it working.
You need to include the file with the function then call the function before your PHP pages do anything else. See Support.
require_once('mobile_device_detect.php');
$mobile = mobile_device_detect();
The function has eight parameters that can be passed to it which define the way it handles different scenarios. These paramaters are:
- iPhone - Set to true to treat iPhones as mobiles, false to treat them like full browsers or set a URL (including http://) to redirect iPhones and iPods to.
- iPad - Set to true to treat iPads as mobiles, false to treat them like full browsers or set a URL (including http://) to redirect iPads to.
- Android - Set to true to treat Android handsets as mobiles, false to treat them like full browsers or set a URL (including http://) to redirect Android and Google mobile users to.
- Opera Mini - Set to true to treat Opera Mini like a mobile, false to treat it like full browser or set a URL (including http://) to redirect Opera Mini users to.
- Blackberry - Set to true to treat Blackberry like a mobile, false to treat it like full browser or set a URL (including http://) to redirect Blackberry users to.
- Palm - Set to true to treat Palm OS like a mobile, false to treat it like full browser or set a URL (including http://) to redirect Palm OS users to.
- Windows - Set to true to treat Windows Mobiles like a mobile, false to treat it like full browser or set a URL (including http://) to redirect Windows Mobile users to.
- Mobile Redirect URL - This should be full web address (including http://) of the site (or page) you want to send mobile visitors to. Leaving this blank will make the script return true when it detects a mobile.
- Desktop Redirect URL - This should be full web address (including http://) of the site (or page) you want to send non-mobile visitors to. Leaving this blank will make the script return false when it fails to detect a mobile.
Function Generator
To make the function easier to work with from a human's perspective use the function generator to select the way you'd like the code to handle different mobile devices.
Just complete the form then click the 'Generate function' button. Your custom function call will be displayed below.
Upgrade
Please upgrade for use on commercial websites
This code is free to download and use on non-profit websites, if your website makes money, shows adverts or is in any way transactional please kindly upgrade and help me keep the code coming!
Please upgrade for commercial usage
A testimonial from the company who made my kitchen:
 |
Lee @ Howden Joinery www.howdens.com I discovered your website yesterday, and like the idea of your mobile re-direct code . . . as it saves my developers days and days of work! I have already implemented the code on our company website (www.howdens.com) and everything is working perfectly! |
Some very lovely and happy clients:
- Calorie Counter Database - about.com
- Punchkick Interactive - punchkickinteractive.com
- Clearwave Mobile - clearwavemobile.com
- Stratus Creative Studio - stratuscreativestudio.com
- Bridge 9 Records - bridge9.com
- Sesame Vault Web Video Engine - sesamevault.com
- U Have Audio - uhaveaudio.com
- Mp3 Downloads, Ringtones & Lyrics - web2txt.co.uk
Change Log:
- 25.11.08 - Added Amazon's Kindle to the pipe seperated array
- 27.11.08 - Added support for Blackberry options
- 27.01.09 - Added usage samples & help with PHP in HTML - .zip
- 09.03.09 - Added support for Windows Mobile options
- 09.03.09 - Removed 'ppc;'=>'ppc;', from array to reduce false positives
- 09.03.09 - Added support for Palm OS options
- 09.03.09 - Added sample .htaccess html.html and help.html files to download
- 16.03.09 - Edited sample .htaccess file - now works with GoDaddy
- 14.08.09 - Reduced false positives
- 14.08.09 - Added Palm Pre
- 14.08.09 - Added answer about search engine spiders
- 14.08.09 - Added status variable to report back it's findings for debugging
- 14.08.09 - Added Torch Mobile Iris Browser to Windows Mobile section
- 14.08.09 - Added HTC Touch 3G to Windows Mobile section
- 14.08.09 - Added help links to PHP header and setup PHP in HTML
- 14.08.09 - Added six usage examples
- 15.08.09 - Checked against the list of agents in the WURFL - 99.27% detected!
- 11,489 mobile user agent strings checked
- 99.27% detection rate after a number of small changes
- Those user agent strings listed that are not detected are either robots or too generic for user agent detection
- Any mobiles not detected by their user agent would most likely return true as they'd be detected by the headers they add.
- 20.11.09 - Removed PDA from the piped array to stop false positives
- 22.12.09 - Moved the site to a server hosted at Rackspace
- 23.12.09 - Added support for Mozilla Fennec
- 23.04.10 - Added support for the Apple iPad
- Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B367 Safari/531.21.10
- Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/7D11
- Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B317 Safari/531.21.10
- 23.04.10 - Changed all eregi function calls to preg_match
- 23.04.10 - Added two more examples
- Added example-7.php which allows switching between desktop and mobile versions
- Added example-8.php which shows why the script made the decision it did
- DOWNLOAD SAMPLE SCRIPTS
- 23.04.10 - No longer using include, using require_once instead
- 18.05.10 - Added example to detect HTML 5 browsers
Support
Most common questions:
Please do not email me with regards to support if you have not paid the upgrade fee. I do not reply to non-customers with support issues.
- Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by...
- How do I make this work on my HTML pages?
- Can you help with samples of PHP in HTML?
- Is it free to use this code?
- Can I use this code on a commercial site?
- I've upgraded can I use this code on all my sites?
- How do I upgrade?
- How do I test it works?
- WHAT ABOUT SEARCH ENGINES?
Please note
The upgrade fee is for the use of the code on commercial sites. Upgrading shows you 1) have a commercial site, 2) have the code working. Please also note I do not perform installations of this code.
Requirements
A desire to give mobile users a better experience, a web server or web hosting environment which has support for PHP, a few minutes and a coffee. More coffee, or is that just me?
I've done everything I can to make this as simple as possible but you do need at least a basic understanding of PHP or a willingness to dive into the PHP Manual to get it working. Please understand I can't assit you at all if you do not have some skill with PHP. It's like trying to teach a cat to bark.
Report a bug
Please submit bug reports to andy at andymoore.info - please also get in touch with any suggestions for the code or about the use of this website.
Contributers are rewarded! If you email me to suggest a new feature and I use it I'll send you something through PayPal to say thank you.
If a device is detected as mobile when it isn't or vice-versa please email me with the user agent that is causing the problem and I will issue an update to the code. Please include the words FALSE POSITIVE in the subject.
Your current user agent is: CCBot/1.0 (+http://www.commoncrawl.org/bot.html)
Please upgrade for commercial usage
Terms and Conditions
Free for non-commercial, charitable and educational use otherwise an upgrade is required. An upgrade costs $50.00 per year by PayPal subscription, by upgrading you are showing you have installed the function and it is working to your expectations.
