iPad identifies (when using Safari) as running macOS 10.15.7 Catalina on Apple desktop Platform

[msinn]

iPad identifies (when using Safari) as running macOS 10.15.7 Catalina on Apple desktop Platform.

When I retrieve the information using Chrome on the same iPad, I receive os is iOS 17.5 and the platform is Apple tablet, which is almosr correct. To be 100% correct, it would be iPadOS 17.5.1, but that's a cosmetic thing.

On an iPhone, Safari shows the correct results (iOS 17.5.1).

[lancedikson]

Hi @msinn! Can you please visit this page and provide a screenshot from it and copy-paste the User Agent string? 🙏
https://bowser-js.github.io/bowser-online/

[AlexanderArvidsson]

I ran into the same problem, here's the user agent string:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/17.8 Safari/605.1.15

Running on the following:

• iPadOS Version: 17.7.1
• Model name: iPad Pro 11-inch (M4)

It's detected as "desktop", here's the full info I get on the test page:

• browser
  • name "Safari"
  • version "17.8"
• os
  • name "macOS"
  • version "10.15.7"
  • versionName "Catalina"
• platform
  • type "desktop"
  • vendor "Apple"
• engine
  • name "WebKit"
  • version "605.1.15"

[kubaprzetakiewicz]

this is by design, browsers won't report macOS version as more than 10.x due to this

up to Sonoma, Safari versions were tied to the macOS one - so just knowing the browser version you could get the OS as well

however, right now there is no reliable way of detecting what version of macOS/iOS the user is using either via UA or via Sec-CH-UA (as Safari does not support it)

[dartzki]

imo the bigger Problem than the wrong Version is that it reports as type.plattform === "desktop"

[lockyang]

Check if Safari requested a desktop website

[hanool]

In iPadOS 26.1, requesting mobile website will get result of
getOS(): { "name": "iOS", "version": "18.7" }`.

[kirkkhua]

Same issue on iPad Air 4th gen iPadOS 26.2:

This was a regular visit, without requesting a desktop website.