Browser Detector

What this does

So you want to see what your browser is reporting about itself: its name and version, the operating system, the engine it uses, and a pile of other details handy for debugging. This lays it all out. Open the page and it fills in everything it can detect.

How to use it

There is nothing to set up. The page reads the details from your browser as soon as it loads and displays them, the core browser facts on one side and a longer list of technical details on the other.

How it works

The information comes from two places, both already inside your browser. The browser name, version, and operating system are worked out from the user agent string, a line of text your browser sends that describes itself, read here with a small detection library. The engine is identified by checking that same string for the tell tale name of each layout engine.

Everything in the more detailed list, the window and screen size, colour depth, language, timezone, whether cookies and features like WebSocket and WebGL are available, and the graphics details, is read straight from the browser's own built in interfaces. None of it is sent anywhere, it is all gathered and shown locally.

A note on user agents

One thing is worth knowing about the browser name and version in particular. The user agent string is self reported, the browser simply states what it is, so it can be changed or imitated, and some browsers now deliberately keep it vague to protect privacy. That makes user agent based detection less dependable than it once was, which is why, in real code, checking whether a specific feature exists is generally preferred over checking which browser is running.

It is also a reminder of how much a browser reveals. The same details shown here, taken together, are part of what lets websites recognise and fingerprint visitors, so this page doubles as a look at your own visible footprint.

Questions people ask

References

1. MDN Web Docs. Navigator: userAgent property. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/userAgent
2. MDN Web Docs. Browser detection using the user agent. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Browser_detection_using_the_user_agent