The lightweight PHP class for detecting mobile devices.

Mobile_Detect is a lightweight PHP class for detecting mobile devices. It uses the user-agent string combined with specific HTTP headers to detect the mobile environment.

History

The first version of the script was developed by Victor Stanciu in 2010. In December 2011, Serban Ghita updated the first version and fixed all the bugs, then launched the 2.0 version which marks a new mindset and also featuring tablet detection.

Throughout 2012, the script has been updated constantly and we have received tons of feedback and requests. In July 2012 we moved from Google Code to GitHub.com in order to quickly accommodate the frequent updates and to involve more people.

How reliable is this script? How frequent do you update it? How?

The script is as reliable as server-side detection can be. This is not a replacement for RWD (media queries) or other forms of client-side detection. Read W3C's Mobile Web Application Best Practices Prefer Server-Side Detection Where Possible section.

In order to detect phones and tablets (new ones and legacy) we're testing the library against HTTP headers and User-Agents that we find on the internet and through the demo.php file (See: http://is.gd/mobiletest). Sometimes is hard to distinguish between a phone and a tablet, this is why we're constantly researching a lot of mobile vendors sites, checking product codes and new releases. You can see some of our 'tests' by checking the test folder.

We are working on a database and API that will automate this process in the near future.

Roadmap and future development. Contribute!

We are preparing v.3.0 and we need your support! The new milestone will mean great features like: basic detection kept untouched, full array with devices details, device/os/browser version utility, jQuery Mobile browser grading utility, source-code that can be easely updated.

Sponsored by the community and by BrowserStack - the complete browser coverage tool (including mobile devices) for testing you web application. Special thanks to Dragos Gavrila who contributed with the logo.

Usage

Include and instantiate the class:

<?php
include 'Mobile_Detect.php';
$detect = new Mobile_Detect();

Basic usage, looking for mobile devices or tablets:

<?php
if ($detect->isMobile()) {
    // Any mobile device.
}

<?php
if($detect->isTablet()){
    // Any tablet device.
}

Check for a specific platform with the help of the magic methods:

<?php
if($detect->isiOS()){
    // Code to run for the Apple's iOS platform.
}

<?php
if($detect->isAndroidOS()){
    // Code to run for the Google's Android platform.
}

Other case insensitive available methods are isIphone(), isIpad(), isBlackBerry(), isKindle(), isOpera(), etc. For the full list of available methods check the demo.php file.

Alternative method is() for checking specific properties (in beta):

<?php
$detect->is('Chrome')
$detect->is('iOS')
$detect->is('UC Browser')
[...]

Batch mode using setUserAgent():

<?php
$userAgents = array(
'Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 4.0.4; Desire HD Build/IMM76D) AppleWebKit/535.19 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/18.0.1025.166 Mobile Safari/535.19',
'BlackBerry7100i/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/103',
[...]
);
foreach($userAgents as $userAgent){
  $detect->setUserAgent($userAgent);
  $isMobile = $detect->isMobile();
  $isTablet = $detect->isTablet();
  // Use the force however you want.
}

Get the version() of components (in beta):

<?php
$detect->version('iPad'); // 4.3 (float)
$detect->version('iPhone') // 3.1 (float)
$detect->version('Android'); // 2.1 (float)
$detect->version('Opera Mini'); // 5.0 (float)
[...]

Projects that are using the class

• concrete5 - concrete5 is a content management system that is free and open source.
• pymobiledetect - python package made by Bas van Oostveen
• PrestaShop - Free, secure and open source shopping cart platform.
• JReviews - Review Script for Joomla, CCK and PHP Directory Script.
• Symphony2 - Symfony2 bundle for detect mobile devices, manage mobile view and redirect to the mobile and tablet version.
• Drupal Mobile Switch - The Mobile Switch module provides a automatic theme switch functionality for mobile devices, detected by Browscap or Mobile Detect. Created by Siegfried Neumann.
• Drupal Mobile Detect - Lightweight mobile detect module for Drupal created by Matthew Donadio.
• Drupal Context Mobile Detect - This is a Drupal Context module which integrates Context and PHP Mobile Detect library. Created by Artem Shymko.
• WP Mobile Detect - WP Mobile detect gives you the ability to wrap that infographic in a [notdevice][/notdevice] shortcode so at the server level WordPress will decide to show that content only if the user is NOT on a phone or tablet.
• Tiny Tiny RSS - Is an open source web-based news feed (RSS/Atom) reader and aggregator, designed to allow you to read news from any location, while feeling as close to a real desktop application as possible.
• Responsage - Is a small WordPress theme plugin that allows you to make your images responsive.
• bConsole - Creates a panel that sits on top of a browser-based project and provides information about the client machine and browser.

Is your project using the library? [Let us know](https://github.com/serbanghita/Mobile-Detect/issues/new?title=New%20script%20using%20Mobile_Detect&body=Description of your script.)!