Why did we create DeviceDetector?
Our previous library UserAgentParser only had the possibility to detect operating systems and browsers. But as more and more traffic is coming from mobile devices like smartphones and tablets it is getting more and more important to know which devices are used by the websites visitors.
To ensure that the device detection within Piwik will gain the required attention, so it will be as accurate as possible, we decided to move that part of Piwik into a separate project, that we will maintain separately. As an own project we hope the DeviceDetector will gain a better visibility as well as a better support by and for the community!
DeviceDetector is hosted on GitHub at piwik/device-detector. It is also available as composer package through Packagist.
How DeviceDetector works
Every client requesting data from a webserver identifies itself by sending a so-called User-Agent within the request to the server. Those User Agents might contain several information such as:
- client name and version (clients can be browsers or other software like feed readers, media players, apps,...)
- operating system name and version
- device identifier, which can be used to detect the brand and model.
For Example:
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 4.4.2; Nexus 5 Build/KOT49H) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML,
like Gecko) Chrome/32.0.1700.99 Mobile Safari/537.36This User Agent contains following information:
Operating system is Android 4.4.2, client uses the browser Chrome Mobile
32.0.1700.99 and the device is a Google Nexus 5 smartphone.
What Device Detector is able to detect
The lists below are auto generated and updated from time to time. Some of them might not be complete.
Last update: 2017/12/04
List of detected operating systems:
AIX, Android, AmigaOS, Apple TV, Arch Linux, BackTrack, Bada, BeOS, BlackBerry OS, BlackBerry Tablet OS, Brew, CentOS, Chrome OS, CyanogenMod, Debian, DragonFly, Fedora, Firefox OS, FreeBSD, Gentoo, Google TV, HP-UX, Haiku OS, IRIX, Inferno, Knoppix, Kubuntu, GNU/Linux, Lubuntu, VectorLinux, Mac, Maemo, Mandriva, MeeGo, MocorDroid, Mint, MildWild, MorphOS, NetBSD, MTK / Nucleus, Nintendo, Nintendo Mobile, OS/2, OSF1, OpenBSD, PlayStation Portable, PlayStation, Red Hat, RISC OS, Remix OS, RazoDroiD, Sabayon, SUSE, Sailfish OS, Slackware, Solaris, Syllable, Symbian, Symbian OS, Symbian OS Series 40, Symbian OS Series 60, Symbian^3, ThreadX, Tizen, Ubuntu, WebTV, Windows, Windows CE, Windows Mobile, Windows Phone, Windows RT, Xbox, Xubuntu, YunOs, iOS, palmOS, webOS
List of detected browsers:
360 Phone Browser, 360 Browser, Avant Browser, ABrowse, ANT Fresco, ANTGalio, Aloha Browser, Amaya, Amigo, Android Browser, Arora, Amiga Voyager, Amiga Aweb, Atomic Web Browser, BlackBerry Browser, Baidu Browser, Baidu Spark, Beonex, Bunjalloo, B-Line, Brave, BriskBard, BrowseX, Camino, Coc Coc, Comodo Dragon, Coast, Charon, Chrome Frame, Chrome, Chrome Mobile iOS, Conkeror, Chrome Mobile, CoolNovo, CometBird, ChromePlus, Chromium, Cyberfox, Cheshire, dbrowser, Deepnet Explorer, Dolphin, Dorado, Dooble, Dillo, Epic, Elinks, Element Browser, GNOME Web, Espial TV Browser, Firebird, Fluid, Fennec, Firefox, Firefox Focus, Flock, Firefox Mobile, Fireweb, Fireweb Navigator, Galeon, Google Earth, HotJava, Iceape, IBrowse, iCab, iCab Mobile, Iridium, IceDragon, Isivioo, Iceweasel, Internet Explorer, IE Mobile, Iron, Jasmine, Jig Browser, Kindle Browser, K-meleon, Konqueror, Kapiko, Kylo, Kazehakase, Liebao, LG Browser, Links, LuaKit, Lunascape, Lynx, MicroB, NCSA Mosaic, Mercury, Mobile Safari, Midori, MIUI Browser, Mobile Silk, Maxthon, Nokia Browser, Nokia OSS Browser, Nokia Ovi Browser, NetFront, NetFront Life, NetPositive, Netscape, Obigo, Odyssey Web Browser, Off By One, ONE Browser, Opera Mini, Opera Mobile, Opera, Opera Next, Oregano, Openwave Mobile Browser, OmniWeb, Otter Browser, Palm Blazer, Pale Moon, Palm Pre, Puffin, Palm WebPro, Palmscape, Phoenix, Polaris, Polarity, Microsoft Edge, QQ Browser, Qutebrowser, QupZilla, Rekonq, RockMelt, Samsung Browser, Sailfish Browser, SEMC-Browser, Sogou Explorer, Safari, Shiira, Skyfire, Seraphic Sraf, Sleipnir, SeaMonkey, Snowshoe, Sunrise, SuperBird, Streamy, Swiftfox, Tizen Browser, TweakStyle, UC Browser, Vivaldi, Vision Mobile Browser, WebPositive, Waterfox, wOSBrowser, WeTab Browser, Yandex Browser, Xiino
List of detected browser engines:
WebKit, Blink, Trident, Text-based, Dillo, iCab, Elektra, Presto, Gecko, KHTML, NetFront, Edge
List of detected libraries:
aiohttp, curl, Faraday, Go-http-client, Google HTTP Java Client, Guzzle (PHP HTTP Client), HTTP_Request2, Java, Mechanize, OkHttp, Perl, Python Requests, Python urllib, Wget, WWW-Mechanize
List of detected media players:
Banshee, Boxee, Clementine, FlyCast, Foobar2000, Instacast, iTunes, Kodi, MediaMonkey, Miro, NexPlayer, Nightingale, QuickTime, Songbird, Stagefright, SubStream, VLC, Winamp, Windows Media Player, XBMC
List of detected mobile apps:
AndroidDownloadManager, AntennaPod, Apple News, BeyondPod, bPod, Castro, Castro 2, DoggCatcher, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, FeedR, Google Play Newsstand, Google Plus, iCatcher, Instacast, Line, Overcast, Pinterest, Player FM, Pocket Casts, Podcasts, Podcat, Podcatcher Deluxe, Podkicker, Sina Weibo, WeChat, WhatsApp, YouTube and mobile apps using AFNetworking
List of detected PIMs (personal information manager):
Airmail, Barca, DAVdroid, Lotus Notes, MailBar, Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Postbox, The Bat!, Thunderbird
List of detected feed readers:
Akregator, Apple PubSub, BashPodder, Downcast, FeedDemon, Feeddler RSS Reader, gPodder, Instacast, JetBrains Omea Reader, Liferea, NetNewsWire, Newsbeuter, NewsBlur, NewsBlur Mobile App, PritTorrent, Pulp, ReadKit, Reeder, RSS Bandit, RSS Junkie, RSSOwl, Stringer
List of brands with detected devices:
3Q, 4Good, Acer, Ainol, Airness, Airties, Alcatel, Allview, Altech UEC, Amazon, Amoi, Apple, Archos, Arnova, ARRIS, Asus, Audiovox, Avvio, Axxion, BangOlufsen, Barnes & Noble, BBK, Becker, Beetel, BenQ, BenQ-Siemens, Bird, Blackview, Blaupunkt, Blu, Bmobile, Boway, bq, Bravis, Brondi, Bush, Capitel, Captiva, Carrefour, Casio, Cat, Celkon, Changhong, Cherry Mobile, China Mobile, CnM, Coby Kyros, Compal, Compaq, ConCorde, Condor, Coolpad, Cowon, CreNova, Cricket, Crius Mea, Crosscall, Cube, CUBOT, Cyrus, Danew, Datang, Dbtel, Dell, Denver, Desay, DEXP, Dicam, Digma, DMM, DNS, DoCoMo, Doogee, Doov, Dopod, Dune HD, E-Boda, Easypix, EBEST, ECS, Elephone, Energy Sistem, Ericsson, Ericy, Eton, eTouch, Evertek, Evolveo, Explay, Ezio, Ezze, Fairphone, Fly, Foxconn, Freetel, Fujitsu, Garmin-Asus, Gateway, Gemini, Gigabyte, Gigaset, Gionee, GOCLEVER, Goly, Google, Gradiente, Grundig, Haier, Hasee, Hi-Level, Hisense, Homtom, Hosin, HP, HTC, Huawei, Humax, Hyrican, Hyundai, i-Joy, i-mate, i-mobile, iBall, iBerry, IconBIT, Ikea, iKoMo, iNew, Infinix, Inkti, Innostream, INQ, Intek, Intex, Inverto, iOcean, iTel, JAY-Tech, Jiayu, Jolla, K-Touch, Karbonn, Kazam, KDDI, Kiano, Kingsun, Komu, Konka, Konrow, Koobee, KOPO, Koridy, KT-Tech, Kumai, Kyocera, Landvo, Lanix, Lava, LCT, LeEco, Lenco, Lenovo, Le Pan, Lexand, Lexibook, LG, Lingwin, Loewe, Logicom, LYF, M.T.T., Majestic, Manta Multimedia, Mecer, Mediacom, MediaTek, Medion, MEEG, Meizu, Memup, Metz, MEU, MicroMax, Microsoft, Mio, Mitsubishi, MIXC, MLLED, Mobistel, Modecom, Mofut, Motorola, Mpman, MSI, MyPhone, NEC, Neffos, Netgear, Newgen, Nexian, NextBook, NGM, Nikon, Nintendo, Noain, Nokia, Nomi, Nous, Nvidia, O2, Odys, Onda, OnePlus, OPPO, Opsson, Orange, Ouki, OUYA, Overmax, Oysters, Palm, Panasonic, Pantech, PEAQ, Pentagram, Philips, phoneOne, Pioneer, Ployer, Point of View, Polaroid, PolyPad, Pomp, Positivo, PPTV, Prestigio, ProScan, PULID, Qilive, QMobile, Qtek, Quechua, Ramos, RCA Tablets, Readboy, Rikomagic, RIM, Roku, Rover, Sagem, Samsung, Sanyo, Sega, Selevision, Sencor, Sendo, Senseit, SFR, Sharp, Siemens, Skyworth, Smart, Smartfren, Smartisan, Softbank, Sony, Sony Ericsson, Spice, Star, Stonex, Storex, Sumvision, SunVan, SuperSonic, Supra, Symphony, T-Mobile, TB Touch, TCL, TechniSat, TechnoTrend, Tecno Mobile, Telefunken, Telenor, Telit, Tesco, Tesla, teXet, ThL, Thomson, TIANYU, TiPhone, Tolino, Toplux, Toshiba, TrekStor, Trevi, Tunisie Telecom, Turbo-X, TVC, UMIDIGI, Uniscope, Unknown, Unowhy, UTStarcom, Vastking, Vertu, Vestel, Videocon, Videoweb, ViewSonic, Vitelcom, Vivo, Vizio, VK Mobile, Vodafone, Voto, Voxtel, Walton, Web TV, WellcoM, Wexler, Wiko, Wileyfox, Wolder, Wolfgang, Wonu, Woxter, Xiaomi, Xolo, Yarvik, Ytone, Yuandao, Yusun, Zeemi, Zen, Zonda, Zopo, ZTE
Note: Piwik itself currently does not use the full feature set of DeviceDetector. Client detection is currently not implemented in Piwik (only detected browsers are reported, other clients are marked as Unknown). Client detection will be implemented into Piwik in the future, follow #5413 to stay updated.
Performance of DeviceDetector
Our detections are currently handled by an enormous number of regexes, that are defined in several .YML Files. As parsing these .YML files is a bit slow, DeviceDetector is able to cache the parsed .YML Files. By default DeviceDetector uses a static cache, which means that everything is cached in static variables. As that only improves speed for many detections within one process, there are also adapters to cache in files or memcache for speeding up detections across requests.
How can users help contribute to DeviceDetector?
Submit your devices that are not detected yet
If you own a device, that is currently not correctly detected by the DeviceDetector, please create a issue on
GitHub
In order to check if your device is detected correctly by the DeviceDetector go to your Piwik server, click
on 'Settings' link, then click on 'Device Detection' under the Diagnostic menu. If the data does not match,
please copy the displayed User Agent and use that and your device data to create a ticket.
Submit a list of your User Agents
In order to create new detections or improve the existing ones, it is necessary for us to have lists of User Agents. If you have a website used by mostly non desktop devices it would be useful if you send a list of the User Agents that visited your website. To do so you need access to your access logs. The following command will extract the User Agents:
zcat ~/path/to/access/logs* | awk -F'"' '{print $6}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -n20000 > /home/piwik/top-user-agents.txtIf you want to help us with those data, please get in touch at devicedetector@piwik.org
Submit improvements on GitHub
As DeviceDetector is free/libre library, we invite you to help us improving the detections as well as the code. Please feel free to create tickets and pull requests on Github.
What's the next big thing for DeviceDetector?
Please check out the list of issues in device-detector issue tracker.
We hope the community will answer our call for help. Together, we can build DeviceDetector as the most powerful device detection library!
Happy Device Detection,