is-mobile
A simple JS library that detects mobile devices.
Why use is-mobile?
You probably shouldn't use this library unless you absolutely have to. In most cases, good responsive design solves the problem of controlling how to render things across different screen sizes. But there are always edge cases. If you have an edge case, then this library might be for you.
I had very specific requirements for a project when I created this:
- Redirect all iPhones, iPods, Android phones, and seven inch devices to the mobile site.
Yep, at the time, a completely separate site had already been created for mobile devices. So I couldn't depend on media queries, feature detection, graceful degradation, progressive enhancement, or any of the cool techniques for selectively displaying things. I had to find a way to redirect visitors on certain devices to the mobile site.
I couldn't do detection on the back-end, because the entire site was generated as HTML, and then cached and served by a CDN, so I had to do the detection client-side.
So I resorted to User-Agent (UA) sniffing.
I tried to keep the script small (currently ~1.4k bytes, minified) and simple, because it would need to execute in the <head>, which is generally a bad idea, since JS blocks the downloading and rendering of all assets while it parses and executes. In the case of mobile redirection, I don't mind so much, because I want to start the redirect as soon as possible, before the device has a chance to start downloading and rendering other stuff. For non-mobile platforms, the script should execute fast, so the browser can quickly get back to downloading and rendering.
How it works
is-mobile provides an IsMobile class constuctor (i.e. new IsMobile()). If you're using the script via a <script> tag without modules or a module bundler, there will be a global IsMobile variable.
Devices detected by is-mobile
The following properties of the contructed IsMobile class will either be true or false:
Apple devices
isMobile.apple.phoneisMobile.apple.ipodisMobile.apple.tablet-
isMobile.apple.device(any mobile Apple device)
Android devices
isMobile.android.phoneisMobile.android.tablet-
isMobile.android.device(any mobile Android device)
Amazon Silk devices (also passes Android checks)
isMobile.amazon.phoneisMobile.amazon.tablet-
isMobile.amazon.device(any mobile Amazon Silk device)
Windows devices
isMobile.windows.phoneisMobile.windows.tablet-
isMobile.windows.device(any mobile Windows device)
Specific seven inch devices
-
isMobile.seven_inch-
trueif the device is one of the following 7" devices:- Nexus 7
- Kindle Fire
- Nook Tablet 7 inch
- Galaxy Tab 7 inch
-
"Other" devices
isMobile.other.blackberry_10isMobile.other.blackberry-
isMobile.other.opera(Opera Mini) isMobile.other.firefoxisMobile.other.chrome-
isMobile.other.device(any "Other" device)
Aggregate Groupings
-
isMobile.any- any device matched -
isMobile.phone- any device in the 'phone' groups above -
isMobile.tablet- any device in the 'tablet' groups above
Installation
$ npm install @kohlmannj/is-mobileUsage
import IsMobile from '@kohlmannj/is-mobile';
console.log(new IsMobile(req.headers['user-agent']).any);