What's the best way to detect a 'touch screen' device using JavaScript?

Question

I\'ve written a jQuery plug-in that\'s for use on both desktop and mobile devices. I wondered if there is a way with JavaScript to detect if the device has touch screen capa

Answer 1

As Modernizr doesn't detect IE10 on Windows Phone 8/WinRT, a simple, cross-browser solution is:

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

You only ever need to check once as the device won't suddenly support or not support touch, so just store it in a variable so you can use it multiple times more efficiently.