Detect between a mobile browser or a PhoneGap application

Question

Is it possible to detect if the user is accessing through the browser or application using JavaScript?

I\'m developing a hybrid application to several mobile OS thr

Answer 1

Solution: Patch index.html in Cordova and add cordova-platform="android" to tag, so that cordova-platform attribute will be only present in Cordova build and missing from original index.html used for web outside of Cordova.

Pros: Not rely on user agent, url schema or cordova API. Does not need to wait for deviceready event. Can be extended in various ways, for example cordova-platform="browser" may be included or not, in order to distinguish between web app outside of Cordova with Cordova's browser platform build.

Merge with config.xml

Add file scripts/patch-android-index.js

module.exports = function(ctx) {
    var fs = ctx.requireCordovaModule('fs');
    var path = ctx.requireCordovaModule('path');

    var platformRoot = path.join(ctx.opts.projectRoot, 'platforms/android');
    var indexPath = platformRoot + '/app/src/main/assets/www/index.html';

    var indexSource = fs.readFileSync(indexPath, 'utf-8');

    indexSource = indexSource.replace('

Notes: For other than android, the paths platforms/android and /app/src/main/assets/www/index.html should be adjusted.

App can check for cordova-platform with

if (! document.documentElement.getAttribute('cordova-platform')) {
  // Not in Cordova
}

or

if (document.documentElement.getAttribute('cordova-platform') === 'android') {
  // Cordova, Android
}