iPhone WebApps, is there a way to detect how it was loaded? Home Screen vs Safari?

iphone mobile web-applications iphone-standalone-web-app

15,193

Solution 1

You can determine whether a webpage is displayed in full-screen mode using the window.navigator.standalone read-only Boolean JavaScript property. https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/SafariHTMLRef/Articles/MetaTags.html

if (window.navigator.standalone) {
    // fullscreen mode

}

Solution 2

You can detect the mode via Javascript as described above - or you can use PHP and the user agent.

<?
if (strpos(strtolower($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']),"iphone")) {
   if (strpos(strtolower($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']),"safari")) {
      echo('Running in browser on iPhone');
   }else{
      echo('Running as stand alone WebApp on iPhone');
   }
}else{
   echo('Running on device other than iPhone.');
}
?>

Enjoy!

Solution 3

This is what I use, works great:

if (window.navigator.userAgent.indexOf('iPhone') != -1) {
    if (window.navigator.standalone == true) {
        alert("Yes iPhone! Yes Full Screen!");
    } else {
        alert("Not Full Screen!");
    };} else {
        alert("Not iPhone!");
        document.location.href = 'please-open-from-an-iphone.html';
};

Solution 4

How to do it with PHP and filter false positives

I think that @strat 's answer is in the right direction, if you want to use PHP. Except that it won't work unless the mobile app capable meta is set. Otherwise the iPhone will place in home a bookmark opening mobile safari. Also, it returned false positives, for example when accessing the page from any other browser on iPhone, like the Facebook browser.

Luckily, the standalone user agent string has a particularity: it only has 3 slashes in it. I tested various other browsers and they all have more than 3. It's hackish, but we can use this at our advantage. Also, it's interesting to note that a standard webview in a app will have 2 slashes.

So this is the minimum working example:

<?php
// We need to add the mobile web app capable meta. Status bar is set to black to avoid our text go under the status bar.
?>

<html>
<head>
  <meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes">
  <meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-status-bar-style" content="black">
</head>
<body>


<?php

$ua = strtolower($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']);

if ( strpos($ua,"iphone") || strpos($ua,"ipad") ) {
   if ( strpos($ua,"safari") ) {
      echo('Running in safari on iPhone/iPad');
   } else if ( substr_count($ua, '/') === 3 ) {
      echo('Running as stand alone WebApp on iPhone/iPad');
   } else if ( substr_count($ua, '/') === 2 ) {
      echo('Running in a WebView on a iPhone/iPad app');
   } else {
      echo('Running in another browser on iPhone/iPad');
   }
} else {
   echo('Running on device other than iPhone/iPad.');
}

?>

</body>
</html>

Solution 5

I'm not sure how far back this behavior goes, but iOS will present different UserAgent strings to the server which can be used to detect if the page is being requested by a webapp or safari browser.

Safari Browser

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 8_1_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/600.1.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/8.0 Mobile/12B436 Safari/600.1.4

Home Screen Button/Web App

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 8_1_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/600.1.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/12B436

Notice it does not include 'Safari' in the UserAgent. I've confirmed that this behavior goes back to at least iOS 7, but I'd imagine even further.

So you can test for the presence of iPhone or iPad in the UserAgent string and lack of Safari to detect that it's been opened from the Home screen.

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Author by

AnApprentice

working on Matter, a new way to gather professional feedback.

Updated on June 14, 2022

Comments

AnApprentice about 2 years
I have an iPhone Web App, and I'm interested in detecting if the app was loaded either from:
1. iPhone Safari
2. iPhone installed web app (via the add to my home screen) which loads without the safari bars.
Any ideas?