iOS Detect If User Is on an iPad

iOS detect if user is on an iPad

There are quite a few ways to check if a device is an iPad. This is my favorite way to check whether the device is in fact an iPad:

if ( UI_USER_INTERFACE_IDIOM() == UIUserInterfaceIdiomPad )
{
    return YES; /* Device is iPad */
}

The way I use it

#define IDIOM    UI_USER_INTERFACE_IDIOM()
#define IPAD     UIUserInterfaceIdiomPad

if ( IDIOM == IPAD ) {
    /* do something specifically for iPad. */
} else {
    /* do something specifically for iPhone or iPod touch. */
}   

Other Examples

if ( [(NSString*)[UIDevice currentDevice].model hasPrefix:@"iPad"] ) {
    return YES; /* Device is iPad */
}

#define IPAD     (UI_USER_INTERFACE_IDIOM() == UIUserInterfaceIdiomPad)
if ( IPAD ) 
     return YES;

For a Swift solution, see this answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/27517536/2057171

Checking if device is iPad

You can use

if (UI_USER_INTERFACE_IDIOM() == UIUserInterfaceIdiomPad)

How to detect iPad Pro as iPad using javascript?

I guess that iPad Pro is upgraded to iPadOS 13 Beta. Since Apple claimed Desktop-Class Browsing with Safari on iPadOS, it seems mobile Safari also mimics macOS behavior and user agent.

So, the short answer is it's not possible.

However you can try workarounds from answers to this question.

How to check if device is an iPad or iPhone not working

if UIDevice.current.userInterfaceIdiom == .pad {
    print("iPad")
}else{
    print("not iPad")
}

But you need to make your app a universal app.

Detect current device with UI_USER_INTERFACE_IDIOM() in Swift

When working with Swift, you can use the enum UIUserInterfaceIdiom, defined as:

enum UIUserInterfaceIdiom : Int {
    case unspecified
    
    case phone // iPhone and iPod touch style UI
    case pad   // iPad style UI (also includes macOS Catalyst)
}

So you can use it as:

UIDevice.current.userInterfaceIdiom == .pad
UIDevice.current.userInterfaceIdiom == .phone
UIDevice.current.userInterfaceIdiom == .unspecified

Or with a Switch statement:

    switch UIDevice.current.userInterfaceIdiom {
    case .phone:
        // It's an iPhone
    case .pad:
        // It's an iPad (or macOS Catalyst)

     @unknown default:
        // Uh, oh! What could it be?
    }

UI_USER_INTERFACE_IDIOM() is an Objective-C macro, which is defined as:

#define UI_USER_INTERFACE_IDIOM() \ ([[UIDevice currentDevice] respondsToSelector:@selector(userInterfaceIdiom)] ? \ [[UIDevice currentDevice] userInterfaceIdiom] : \ UIUserInterfaceIdiomPhone)

Also, note that even when working with Objective-C, the UI_USER_INTERFACE_IDIOM() macro is only required when targeting iOS 3.2 and below. When deploying to iOS 3.2 and up, you can use [UIDevice userInterfaceIdiom] directly.

Detect if device is iOS

Detecting iOS

With iOS 13 iPad both User agent and platform strings are changed and differentiating between iPad and MacOS seems possible, so all answers below needs to take that into account now.

This might be the shortest alternative that also covers iOS 13:

function iOS() {
  return [
    'iPad Simulator',
    'iPhone Simulator',
    'iPod Simulator',
    'iPad',
    'iPhone',
    'iPod'
  ].includes(navigator.platform)
  // iPad on iOS 13 detection
  || (navigator.userAgent.includes("Mac") && "ontouchend" in document)
}

iOS will be either true or false

Worse option: User agent sniffing

User Agent sniffing is more dangerous and problems appear often.

On iPad iOS 13, the user agent is identical with that of a MacOS 13 computer, but if you ignore iPads this might work still for a while:

var iOS = !window.MSStream && /iPad|iPhone|iPod/.test(navigator.userAgent); // fails on iPad iOS 13

The !window.MSStream is to not incorrectly detect IE11, see here and here.

Note: Both navigator.userAgent and navigator.platform can be faked by the user or a browser extension.

Browser extensions to change userAgent or platform exist because websites use too heavy-handed detection and often disable some features even if the user's browser would otherwise be able to use that feature.

To de-escalate this conflict with users it's recommended to detect specifically for each case the exact features that your website needs. Then when the user gets a browser with the needed feature it will already work without additional code changes.

Detecting iOS version

The most common way of detecting the iOS version is by parsing it from the User Agent string. But there is also feature detection inference*;

We know for a fact that history API was introduced in iOS4 - matchMedia API in iOS5 - webAudio API in iOS6 - WebSpeech API in iOS7 and so on.

Note: The following code is not reliable and will break if any of these HTML5 features is deprecated in a newer iOS version. You have been warned!

function iOSversion() {

  if (iOS) { // <-- Use the one here above
    if (window.indexedDB) { return 'iOS 8 and up'; }
    if (window.SpeechSynthesisUtterance) { return 'iOS 7'; }
    if (window.webkitAudioContext) { return 'iOS 6'; }
    if (window.matchMedia) { return 'iOS 5'; }
    if (window.history && 'pushState' in window.history) { return 'iOS 4'; }
    return 'iOS 3 or earlier';
  }

  return 'Not an iOS device';
}

How to detect if it's running on iPhone or iPad?

Try this UIDevice Class Method

 [[UIDevice currentDevice] name]              // like "S R Nayak's iPhone"
 [[UIDevice currentDevice] model]             // like @"iPhone", @"iPod Touch"
 [[UIDevice currentDevice] localizedModel]    // localized version of model
 [[UIDevice currentDevice] systemName]        // like @"iPhone OS"
 [[UIDevice currentDevice] systemVersion]     // like @"4.0"
 [[UIDevice currentDevice] uniqueIdentifier]  // UDID, a unique string to identify the device

Otherwise you can check:

 if (UI_USER_INTERFACE_IDIOM() == UIUserInterfaceIdiomPhone &&
[[[UIDevice currentDevice] model] hasPrefix:@"iPad"]) {
// This app is an iPhone app but running on an iPad

}

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