Google Chrome user agent

It’s easy to find out what Google Chrome’s user-agent is. Using the same trick as I did with the iPhone, I searched for phpinfo HTTP_USER_AGENT in Google Chrome. Click on one of the results and search for HTTP_USER_AGENT on the page. Here’s the image that I see:

Google Chrome useragent

My exact user-agent is

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/0.A.B.C Safari/525.13

So “0.2.149.27” is the current version, but that will change over time. I wouldn’t be surprised if the “525.13” value for WebKit changed too.

Update: atul points out in the comments that using “about:” or “about:version” in the address bar works well too.

Update: Someone pointed out Google’s official documentation about the Chrome user agent as well.

48 Responses to Google Chrome user agent (Leave a comment)

  1. So it is possible to block chrome users to come to my website…

    Just saying. πŸ™‚

    Jokes apart, an amazing Browser, the only thing lacking for me is support for plugins. As I heavily depend on them for my day to day work on FF3.

    It’s blazing fast, and does better than FF3 on Acid3. Using chrome feels very natural, like you would think all browser should be like.

  2. Not sure if visiting e.g. http://www.sicherheitstest.ch/static/client/banner/frame.html ain’t easier, even though it’s in German (just click “Test starten” button).

  3. For Chrome, the user agent is also displayed when you do about: or about:version in your Chrome browser.

  4. atul, good point. That’s much easier. I’ll update the post. πŸ™‚

  5. In addition to the “about:” and “about:version” pages, the user agent string is also displayed if you select “About Google Chrome” from the config menu.

    Why does the user agent string need to be so long-winded!?!?

  6. Talking about user agents, why are most of the user-agent strings in use so bad and confusing ? This one says “Mozilla/5.0” (…like everybody else I’d be tempted to add) even though it’s not a Mozilla product. Then it says “Safari/…” even though it’s not Safari. It also mentions KHTML and Gecko, none of them being Chrome’s engine. Fortunately, it does mention Chrome and WebKit, the actual, relevant infos.

    Of course, this is not exclusive to Chrome, most browsers use terrible, terrible user-agent strings.

  7. If they provide the same “interface” for firefox extensions, chrome could easily take a very large market share away from firefox…

  8. Matt,
    I recommend you check out these links:http://www.milw0rm.com/exploits/6353
    and
    http://www.milw0rm.com/exploits/6355

    There are some serious bugs in this version. Letting your colleagues know would help a lot to get those fixed πŸ˜‰

    Cheers.

  9. Hi Matt,

    Could you tell me about DEP (Data Execution Prevention) and why even though you add google chrome to the list in system settings Chrome still seems to crash because of DEP? I think there is another EXE running behind the program which i cant find to add it to the DEP List. My question is guess is 1. why and 2. what file do i need to add to fix this?

  10. Matt – by the way, the Google Chrome replacement for short 404 pages suggests a Google site: search even when you’re on an intranet site – you might want to fix that πŸ˜‰

  11. I bloody hope the Webkit version changes, what with the carpet bomb exploit still being present in the current version being used πŸ˜‰

    Ah well, roll on new versions!

  12. Major BUG!

    you also need to fix the being able to recover the saved passwords plaintext. ASAP otherwise wise big corporates will ban its use!

    Your security guys drop a clanger as well as your GC

  13. @Maurice: That’s not possible unless it gets encrypted with a master password. That password would then have to be entered each time you wanted to use one of your saved passwords. You cache the password in the memory when it was first used, but then it would be possible to just dump it from there instead.

    If you want security then don’t save your passwords. It works the same way in Firefox as well.

  14. Here’s a Perl CGI script I whipped up years ago that provides misc. information about your browser and IP:
    http://www.komar.org/cgi-bin/ip_to_country2.pl

    Josh asks a good question about why the user agent string is sooo long – my assumption is that is to ensure compatability with web sites that check HTTP_USER_AGENT and then if they see Mozilla, take a certain course of action – ditto for the Safari string, etc.

    It’s argueably a bit much (10 years from now, the string could be KBytes long to encompass all browsers created!) and it would be nice if the browser vendors shortened ’em … but then users would complain that things break on sites that implement browser specific stuff, especially for new ones like “Chrome” that would not be if/else/case’d yet.

    alek

    P.S. Matt: Don’t know if you are involved in Google Images, but I can provide a short/sweet example of a boo-boo I noticed several months ago and is still there – drop me an Email if you want details.

  15. One way to check user agent of any (JavaScript enabled) browser is to type, for example, the following:

    javascript:navigator.userAgent

    into the location bar…except Safari, where you need to do pop up some window to see the string, ie. like this:

    javascript:prompt(“”, navigator.userAgent)

  16. Funny, that Google Analytics seems to identify Chrome as Safari.

  17. Google Analytics started to recognise Chrome in its own right overnight (UK time) last night.

    Do we have news on when it will have the bigs fixed that prevent Adbrite splash pages displaying, and mess up a lot of Facebook interactions?

    Both of these are no-no areas. Blocking a competitor’s adverts, even accidentally, is bad news, and alienating Facebook users might be an annoyance too far

  18. “Why does the user agent string need to be so long-winded!?!?”

    Martin and Josh Davis, I think that the Chrome team wanted to provide as much information as possible (e.g. the version of WebKit) so that webmasters would have a really good idea of what was under the hood of the browser.

    Manca, I’m sure the Chrome team has seen those. I believe the second link has already been fixed in newer versions of WebKit, for example, and I would expect Chrome to incorporate that soon.

    CK, I’m not familiar with that issue, but there may be some people talking about DEP on the official Chrome help group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-chrome-help

    Good feedback, Ian Macfarlane–thanks.

    Thomas Promny, I think people are changing Google Analytics quite soon to recognize it as a separate browser. Ah, Tim Trent says it’s already underway. Thanks, Tim! By the way Tim, both of the issues you mention are just rendering/page errors, not intentional. I’ve seen people discussing the Facebook interactions, so I expect that they’ll get that fixed quickly in upcoming versions of the beta.

  19. Ah great, now it shows as Chrome in Analytics as well. To give you an idea Matt,.. (even though Google probably has an even better idea of this data),.. a site of ours that gets about 5000 visitors per day spreaded all over Brazil, shows that 0.32 % of the visitors are using Chrome. Considering that I’m one of them and just visited the site once to see if it’s working fine in Chrome,.. I think 0.30% is a good indication of the use of Chrome in Brazil.

    IE with 88 % still leads the rest at a huge distance.

  20. I checked another site with about 30.000 visitors per day that sells clothes, and that nobody here in the office visited this week. TheyΒ΄re at about 0.23% Chrome Users.

    Chrome still in 4th position closing in on Safari! πŸ™‚

  21. Thanks–good to know, Peter (IMC)! Not bad for something that’s only been available for download for about two days!

  22. Yep,.. lets see what the numbers are after 2 months,.. and from which browser they are taking market share,. πŸ™‚

  23. I actually added some code to my site that displays the user agent to visitors if they are curious… Also I like looking at google’s cache of my site and seeing the googlebot being echo’d so I know google is keeping it honest, yahoo and MS are playing nice as well…
    Here’s the simple code:

  24. Matt, can you explain to me why Chrome is “faster” when the surfing the Web is only ever going to be as fast as the narrowest bottle neck in a long line of processes?

    I would NOT think that the choice of Browser is the narrowest bottle neck is 99% of cases.

  25. Got a couple of bugs/suggestions for the Chrome team… In the spanish localized version, it correctly displays all buttons, and features in spanish… except the inline dictionary (that gives you spell suggestions as you write) which is preconfigured in english…
    Also, it would be cool that if it detects the page to be written in english, (like this one), it should switch that spell correction accordingly… (because in MOST cases, if I write or comment something in a page written in english, it will most likely be written as well in that language)… perhaps an advanced option or something? Cheers… πŸ˜‰

  26. And another one, I can’t understand why they decided the home page button was now opt-in… I was testing it with a couple non-tech friends the browser the other day, and they complained it was no where to be seen, and they needed it (badly)… for now you have to go to options to enable it…

  27. Dave,

    You’d think that the bottle neck usually is the internet connection. But that’s not correct. IE. needs a lot more time to show a page than Chrome.

    Just do some tests,.. open a page like the nasa website and check how long it takes before it is completely shown in your screen. You’ll notice Chrome is a lot faster.

  28. Going Good Matt, Now at about 0.4%… already passed Safari now in both sites!

  29. Dread Pirate Robert

    about:internets

    Bwa ha ha ha ha! Google Chrome may be the funniest browser around…

  30. Matt, can you explain to me why Chrome is β€œfaster” when the surfing the Web is only ever going to be as fast as the narrowest bottle neck in a long line of processes?

    I would NOT think that the choice of Browser is the narrowest bottle neck is 99% of cases.

    Sure, Dave (original). Two of my evergreen (and by that I mean “literally always open”) browser tabs are Gmail and Google Calendar. Web applications like that rely heavily on JavaScript/AJAX and run very fast in a modern browser such as Chrome. If you spend a fair amount of your day in Gmail, you really notice faster JavaScript execution.

    Luis Alberto, I missed the home page at first two, but after complaining for a while at first, I soon realized that I liked the New Tab page on Chrome better. But you can still turn on the home page. I’ll pass on the feedback.

    Dread Pirate Robert: I love that easter egg–especially the title. πŸ™‚

  31. Thanks, Matt. I guess, for few heavy Web surfering professionals it’s faster, but not for general population, which is why I don’t notice any difference.

  32. can some plugin will be available in google chrome in future??

  33. Matt, just out of curiosity. Isn’t Chrome only available for windows? I thought you use linux only.

  34. Matt,

    another thing. I noticed that Chrome has this built in spelling checker when you fill out a form. I like that ability a lot. But it would be even better if there would be the option to show spelling errors in web pages. That would reduce some of our work a lot!!!!

    Does this option exist and if not, please ask the development team to add it in the next update.. πŸ™‚

  35. I would like to echo Peter’s suggestion about whole page spell checking, which would be very handy for me, as I mostly use notepad, and it would remove the need to copy-paste in to word every page I write.

    Also, (off-topic), if you don’t mind me asking, how do you go about reporting a possible bug in search results pages to Google?

    Regards,

  36. Matt, those “page rendering errors” are pretty serious things. Of course it’s accidental, only a fool would do it on purpose, but not being able to use Facebook (etc) within Chrome, Beta or not, means that the Product Manager is not as savvy as s/he likes to think.That is not a bug to escape into the wild. To me that’s a gating factor.

    I was expecting them to be fixed in the later build that went public, but no. I’d give that pair pretty high priority.

    Amusing that Hotmail fails to recognise Chrome, too!

  37. I don’t know if the problem I’m having mostly with Chrome is happening in most PC’s but in my PC’s I’m noticing that flash is difficult for Chrome.

    Often it just stops the browser completely for a while. (in terms of 5 to 20 seconds).

  38. Matt, i have a little question? How do i search results for something like http://www.example.com (trying to search sites with http://www.example.com) in chrome, as the serach bar is the same of the navigation bar??

  39. My HTTP header viewer is another quick way to check your user agent (and other) headers. Saves you the hassle of finding someone’s phpinfo page.

    Eric

  40. In the sites I’m following, Chrome seems to level out at 0,6 % (on average) of market share.

    What would be the next step to popularize it Matt?

    How about:

    * Getting bugs out
    * Add some features that are very common and used a lot in IE and FF (for example: Search a word in a page)
    * Evangelism (a lot of people have no interest in changing because they just don’t know any better. Evangelism is not advertising by the way)
    * Add some feature that is so practical that once you get used to it (and that should be fast), you can’t do without anymore. (difficult but should be possible.)

  41. I’d love to use Google Chrome but until its problems with southern hemisphere daylight savings times are fixed(http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-and-Chrome-en/browse_thread/thread/09d3e5aa301260f1/d6624714648fe408#d6624714648fe408), I can’t even use it reliably to read my gmail.
    V disappointing πŸ™

  42. The browser does not have a full screen mode. A help button or link, and user documentation is absent.. Any chance this is going to be fixed? Adding to favorites is also a pain.

  43. There is a methods to recognize Chrome as Google browser instead of Netscape if you use phpstats: http://forum.html.it/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1270412
    Add Chrome line: Array(‘Chrome’,’Chrome’,’Chrome/’,’Safari’),
    in first place of user-agent array on bw.dat file
    πŸ™‚
    Bye

  44. Mostly what I hear is a great deal of nit picking. I have been using it and think it kicks ass on the whole.

  45. I like the speed dial system and waiting for the toolbars for chrome

  46. Can different browsers share the same user agent?

  47. Any ‘For N00bz’ guide to changing the UserAgent to enable watching netflix on chrome? Replies appreciated.

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