Tell iPadOS from macOS on the web

Question

The user agent of Safari on iPadOS beta is at this point exactly the same as Safari on macOS. Is there any other way to tell an iPad from a Mac?

iPad running         


        

Answer 1

I would not generally recommend this, and I haven't tested it much (using something similar in production since September 2019), but one way could be to detect the existence of TouchEvent on the client side, and match it with the state of the user agent to account for older iOS versions of iPad:s. YMMV. Likely not very future safe.

function isIpad() {
    const ua = window.navigator.userAgent;
    if (ua.indexOf('iPad') > -1) {
        return true;
    }

    if (ua.indexOf('Macintosh') > -1) {
        try {
            document.createEvent("TouchEvent");
            return true;
        } catch (e) {}
    }

    return false;
}