One line function to detect mobile devices with JavaScript

You say ". . . usually desktop computers and laptops didn't have it. . ."
On which devices have you found window.orientation to be defined?

For now this trick have been worked an all devices I've tested. I didn't have any problem on Android, iOS, Mac OS X, Windows 7 and 8.

I tested today and it works fine on Opera Coast for iPad and Safari for iOS7, but not on InternetExplorer for Windows Phone 7.8 and 8.

Is it possible to add a compatibility table to your tip?

@robsonsobral tables are not working right now, meanwhile I've created a list. If you could please tell me Windows Phone 7.8 and 8 user agents I could extend the function and add support for those devices too.

Sure, @2fdevs!

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows Phone 8.0; Trident/6.0; IEMobile/10.0; ARM; Touch; NOKIA; Lumia 820)
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows Phone OS 7.5; Trident/5.0; IEMobile/9.0; NOKIA; Lumia 800)

And you always can check this.

Hi @robsonsobral

Thank you!

I've updated the function and added an online tester :)

@2fdevs, do you mind if I simplify your function a little bit?

return (typeof window.orientation !== "undefined") || (navigator.userAgent.indexOf('IEMobile') !== -1);

Much better!

I've changed it :)

How about testing for actual touch events like this:

var supportsTouch = 'ontouchstart' in window || navigator.msMaxTouchPoints;

It works on all of the browsers you've listed too

That returns undefined in Windows 8 touch based devices. I will do more tests however.

Surface Pro 1 isn't considered mobile, despite the changes of screen orientation.

Chrome:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/30.0.1599.101 Safari/537.36

Firefox 23
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64; rv:23.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/23.0

Internet Explorer 10
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows NT 6.2; WOW64; Trident/6.0; Touch; .NET4.0E; .NET4.0C; Tablet PC 2.0; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.30729)

But I don't know if we should consider Surface as a mobile or not.

That's a good question, I think that we should not consider Surface as a mobile, but it is a really hybrid device so it could fit in this category.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure that anyone could modify the function to whatever they need.

@2fdevs, my friend who owns one and tested this for me said he consider it as a "mini ultra book", because isn't really "mobile". So...

Hi, this is something ive been looking for. Its now Oct 2016. Is this code still reliable to use with most of todays browsers/devices? Im a newbie coder so at the moment its beyond me to figure it out myself :)

Test Link Is Broken/Invalid

Hi,
window.orientation has been deprecated: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/orientation#Browser_compatibility
Thanks for the post anyway

MDN says window.orientation is deprecated and will be dropped any time later. So, use of it is unreliable.

There is a a really nice API for this. You can detect the device type, brand, name, and more… and it is for free! You can find it on https://www.theapifactory.com

Hope this helps :)