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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-28T01:55:06+00:00

I have a website that, when accessed by a mobile browser, to redirect to

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I have a website that, when accessed by a mobile browser, to redirect to a different page.

I have been having trouble coming up with a way that reliably detects mobile devices. Currently, I Javascript code like this:

if (document.documentElement.clientWidth < 680 || 
    document.documentElement.clientHeight < 450) 
  location.href = "handheld.aspx";

that redirects if the broswer size is smaller than what is supported on the desktop version. The problem with this is that some mobile browsers start zoomed way out and have the similar browser dimensions as desktop devices.

I’ve researched this some, and I’ve mainly found solutions that involve sniffing the user agent sting and checking it against a bunch of strings in existing mobile devices. If possible, I’d like to avoid that route because it seems extremely messy and will break in the future when new devices come out.

Is there a less kludgy way to detect mobile browsers, or at least a more reliable way to detect screen size?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You have to decide which aspect of a mobile browser you are most trying to detect. Are you trying to detect the screen size and redirect to a site design that fits on a smaller screen. If so, you can use window.screen (doc here).

    If you’re trying to detect specific capabilities or lack of capabilities in mobile browsers, then you should use feature detection to find out whether the specified features are there or not there. This is way better than detecting browser user agents.

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