Tell iPadOS from macOS on the web

Question

The user agent of Safari on iPadOS beta is at this point exactly the same as Safari on macOS. Is there any other way to tell an iPad from a Mac?

iPad running         


        

Answer 1

as @Jonny mentioned you can try and detect touch events, this is the solution i currently use

function isTouchDevice() {
  if (typeof window === 'undefined') return false
  const prefixes = ' -webkit- -moz- -o- -ms- '.split(' ')
  function mq(query) {
    return typeof window !== 'undefined' && window.matchMedia(query).matches
  }
  if ('ontouchstart' in window || (window?.DocumentTouch && document instanceof DocumentTouch)) return true
  const query = ['(', prefixes.join('touch-enabled),('), 'heartz', ')'].join('') // include the 'heartz' - https://git.io/vznFH
  return mq(query)
}

interesting post on detecting touch events

and another note, Firefox on Ipad uses the same safari user-agent :/