How to Emulate iPhone (Change User Agent) in Safari and Firefox Web Browser

When web browser accessing the web server to download web page’s contents, it send an user agent to the web server to identify what kind or type of browser, platform and application is used to view the website. Useragent allows web server to respond separately to different system or apply different behavior and features to different browser.

With the popularity of iPhone soaring high, which sales will surely climb higher with the release of iPhone 3G at ridiculously low price, a lot of content providers have create unique, interesting, and sometimes free contents specifically just for iPhone users. Some websites even prepare an individual special user interface for iPhone user, normally just nicely fit into the screen orientation and size of iPhone LCD.

To access these contents from the desktop or laptop and notebook computer, which has a bigger LCD screen, instead of having to view the web pages on the comparably small screen, user can change the user agent string on the PC web browser. Changing web browser’s user agent to emulate and imitate as iPhone usually work because this is the check most web servers depends on.

To use Firefox web browser as if it’s the Safari browser inside the iPhone, follow this guide to change the user agent of Firefox. The user agent string to use is as follow:

For general.useragent.override in about:config preference:

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A543 Safari/419.3

For User Agent Switcher add-on:

Description: iPhone
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en)
App Name: AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko)
App Version: Version/3.0
Platform: Mobile/1A543 Safari/419.3

To fake iPhone’s Safari using Safari in Windows or Mac OS X, run Safari, click on Edit -> Preference, then go to Advanced tab. Check the checkbox for Show Develop menu in menu bar option.

Exit from the Preference dialog window, a new “Develop” menu will show in the menu bar. Click on Develop, and then select User Agent in the pull down menu. Click to select Mobile Safari 1.1.3 – iPhone.

Now the both Firefox and Safari browsers is surfing the web by telling everybody that you’re indeed using an iPhone to connect to Internet.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 28th, 2008 at 2:11 am and is filed under Tips & Tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

11 Responses to “How to Emulate iPhone (Change User Agent) in Safari and Firefox Web Browser”

  1. Jamal
    February 5th, 2010 21:11
    11

    hot case:) saves my iPhone battery. short n sweet.
    Thx

  2. How to Change and Spoof Safari User-Agent String » My Digital Life
    January 27th, 2010 18:17
    10

    [...] different contents to different type of devices, making changing of user-agent necessary (such as emulate iPhone in Safari desktop browser) to access content pages targeted to specific [...]

  3. Louis Han
    November 17th, 2009 00:47
    9

    what is the iphone 2.0 agent?

  4. adnan
    September 20th, 2009 11:35
    8

    Thanks for the tips. I was trying to test my blog http://abcoder.com on iPhone after installing WPtouch plugin. It worked great for me.

    Thanks
    Adnan

  5. jehzlau
    June 9th, 2009 02:07
    7

    thanks for this.. this is exactly what I’m looking for :)

  6. The Digital Alchemist
    April 16th, 2009 11:24
    6

    Great, so how do I go the other way and spoof a real browser on on a jailbroken iPhone? I have UAFaker which spoofs Firefox, but how do I change UAFaker to use something else?

  7. Richy’s Random Ramblings » Blogging: New blog design v5?
    February 25th, 2009 06:54
    5

    [...] iPhone theme providing the iPhone theming (with the compatibility being checked by using the How to emulate iPhone (Change user agent) in Safari and Firefox tips for testing on the desktop). I’m also utilising the Twitter for Wordpress plugin to pull [...]

  8. The Tech Corner - Now Mobile | Tech Corner
    January 19th, 2009 11:22
    4

    [...] To the left is a screenshot of Tech Corner on Colum’s iPod Touch. If you would like to see the mobile version of Tech Corner in your browser, simply switch your user agent to iPhone. (How to change user agent: http://www.mydigitallife.info/2008/06/28/how-to-emulate-iphone-change-user-agent-in-safari-and-firef...) [...]

  9. mickey mouse
    November 12th, 2008 23:21
    3

    el emular las páginas es muy bueno. pero alguien sabe si se pueden usar todos los servicios igualmente que cuando lo estan usando con el navegador del iPhone ? . Esta es mi interrogante ya que estuve visitando algunas páginas web con este emulador y al parecer solo podía ver pero no tocar jeje. era como si estuviera solo de expectador sin poder hacer nada. Alguien puede respònder a esto ?

  10. TomTrottier
    July 2nd, 2008 06:01
    2

    Google maps also has a special, abbreviated interface for “iphone” browsers – switch back for full features.

    tOM

  11. Kerepek
    June 28th, 2008 09:45
    1

    I use proxomitron. Very easy to fake user agent.

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