default user agent safari

• Do Not Sell My Personal Info

•  ⋅ 
• Web Dev SEO

How to Change User Agents in Chrome, Edge, Safari & Firefox

Discover how to change user agents in web browsers for testing purposes. Learn how to ensure your campaigns are running properly and target the right audience.

Whether you are an SEO pro, marketer, or web developer, you might often need to change your browser’s user-agent to test different things.

For example, imagine you’re running a MAC-OS-specific campaign. To find out if your campaign is running properly and not targeting Linux users, changing the user-agent of your browser can help you test.

Changing user-agents is almost a daily task for web developers, as they need to test how websites behave in different browsers and devices.

What Is A User-Agent?

A user-agent is an HTTP request header string identifying browsers, applications, or operating systems that connect to the server.

Browsers have user-agents, and so do bots and crawlers such as search engines Googlebot , Google AdSense, etc.

Here, we will learn how to change your browser’s user-agent.

The process is called user-agent spoofing .

Spoofing occurs when a browser or client sends a different user-agent HTTP header from what it is and fakes it.

While the term may be alarming, this is not a dangerous activity and will not cause you any problems. (Feel free to spoof your user-agent as much as you want.)

How To Change Your User-Agent On Chrome & Edge

Since Microsoft Edge is now using Chromium , the settings for both Chrome and Edge are the same.

1. Right Click Anywhere On Webpage > Inspect

Alternatively, you can use CTR+Shift+I on Windows and Cmd + Opt +J on Mac.

2. Choose More Tools > Network Conditions

Screen new.

Click on the three vertical dots in the upper right corner.

3. Uncheck Select Automatically Checkbox

4. Choose One Among The Built-In User-Agents List

If the user-agent you want doesn’t exist, you can enter any string you want on the field below the list.

For example, you can enter the following (Googlebot’s user-agent) into the custom field:

This may be useful for SEO professionals to identify if there is a cloaking on the website where the webpage shows specific content to Googlebot and different content to website visitors.

Alternatively, you can use the Chrome extension User-Agent Switcher and Manager .

That said, I try not to use browser extensions when the browser can perform the action I want. This is to avoid overloading the browser with add-ons.

Also, extensions have a habit of breaking websites unexpectedly sometimes.

While you might think the website you visited has an issue, the root cause can be one of the add-ons you’re using.

How To Change User-Agent On Safari

1. go to preferences.

2. Enable Develop Menu Bar

Go to Advanced  and check Show Develop menu in menu bar .

3. Navigate To Develop > User-Agent

You can again select from a predefined list or enter a custom user-agent string by choosing “Other…”

How To Change User-Agent In Firefox

In Firefox, it is possible to change user-agents via the browser’s built-in settings.

However, it is not as user-friendly as on Chrome or Safari.

It is a real pain to use the browser’s built-in feature.

Instead, we will use a Firefox add-on called User-Agent Switcher .

After installing the add-on, you will see an icon in the upper right corner.

You can select one of the predefined user-agents or enter a custom user-agent by clicking on the pen icon below.

Another extension you can use is User-Agent Switcher and Manager .

User-Agents Are Easy To Spoof

The user-agents are easy to spoof, and anyone can use these easy tricks to alter them.

This feature is useful for testing web apps against various devices, especially when the HTML is different for mobile or tablet devices.

It is a cost-efficient way to test websites as one doesn’t need to have many physical devices to be able to test.

However, certain issues may appear on the real device but not when testing by changing the user agent and using a browser emulator.

In that case, if you want to test on multiple real devices, I suggest using Browserstack , which offers testing opportunities on almost all devices.

What is a user agent?

User agent is a HTTP request header string identifying browser, application, operating system which connects to the server. Not only browsers have user agent but also bots, search engines crawlers such as Googlebot, Google Adsense etc. which are not browsers.

What is user-agent spoofing?

When browser or any client sends different user-agent HTTP header from what they are and fakes it that is called spoofing .

How does changing the user-agent help SEO professionals?

SEO professionals may find changing the user-agent to be a critical part of their audit process. It is beneficial for several reasons:

• Identifying cloaking issues : By mimicking different user-agents, such as Googlebot, SEO experts can uncover whether a website presents different content to search engines than users, which violates search engine guidelines.
• Compatibility: It ensures web applications are compatible across various browsers and devices.
• User Experience : Developers can optimize the user experience by understanding how content is rendered on different systems.
• Debugging: Changing the user-agent can help pinpoint browser-specific issues.
• Quality Assurance: It’s an essential step in quality assurance and helps maintain the integrity and performance of a website.

Can changing your browser’s user-agent pose a security risk?

No, changing your browser’s user-agent, commonly called user-agent spoofing, does not inherently pose a security risk. While the term “spoofing” might suggest malicious intent, this practice in the context of user-agents is harmless. It is a tool for developers and marketers to test how websites and applications interact with various devices and browsers.

More resources:

• An Introduction to Rendering For SEO
• Using Chrome DevTools To Diagnose Site Issues In An Audit
• 7 Essential SEO Browser Extensions & Plugins

Featured Image: /Shutterstock

All screenshots taken by author, May 2024

I am dedicated to ensuring the smooth and uninterrupted operation of Search Engine Journal. As the Director of Technology, I ...

Subscribe To Our Newsletter.

Conquer your day with daily search marketing news.

How-To Geek

How to change safari's user agent on os x.

User agent "spoofing" is not a new thing.

Quick Links

What is a user agent anyway.

You've probably been annoyed at one time or another when visiting a website that requires a specific browser. Luckily, you can fool a website into thinking you're using a different browser and you can do this with most, including Safari.

User agent "spoofing" is not a new thing. It was sometimes necessary when there was a so-called browser war. Website designers would often design pages to render and deliver different content depending on the user's browser. The solution to this was often to send a false "user agent string," which would fool the web server into delivering you the preferred content.

Today, users are less likely to have a problem since websites and browsers are better at adhering to web standards. That's not to say you won't still encounter one every now and then.

If you use Apple OS X's Safari, here's how you change the user agent, and even create custom ones as well.

When Safari visits a website, it will send a string of text such as this:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_10_2) AppleWebKit/600.3.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/8.0.3 Safari/600.3.18

This tells the web server that this particular user is running Safari 8 on a Mac running OS X 10.10.2.

It will obviously be different per the operating system and web browser. A computer running Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 10 would appear as such:

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows NT 6.1; Trident/6.0)

The list of user agent strings is quite extensive because there are so many browsers on different operating systems. By the way, it's possible to see what information your browser reveals about you , which includes your screen resolution, IP address, and more.

Changing Your User Agent on Safari

We've discussed the ways you can change the user agent on Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Firefox . Let's discuss now how to change it on Apple OS X's Safari.

First, open Safari's preferences from the "Safari" menu or with "Command + ,".

With the preferences open, click on the "Advanced" tab. At the very bottom, you want to check the box next to "Show Develop menu in the menu bar" and then exit out of the preferences.

Now Safari will have a new menu devoted solely to development tools.

The "User Agent" menu is at the top. There's already quite a few options available including preceding versions of Safari on OS X and iOS, Chrome on Mac and Windows, as well as an "Other..." option.

The "Other..." option allows you to specify a user agent other than those listed, such as if you're curious to see how Google Chrome on an iPad running iOS 8.2 renders, you'd use the appropriate string.

When you open the "Other..." option from the User Agent menu then, you'd simply type of copy the user agent string for the browser you want to test.

Afterwards, the new user agent will appear in the User Agent menu. Note, however, you can only have one "other" user agent at a time.

As we suggested in the introduction, it's unusual to have to change your user agent because most browsers are fairly good now at adhering to standards, and most websites are browser agnostic (though some browsers work better on some sites than others).

On a related note, if you're curious to see how your browser does with regard to web standards, you can always try the Acid Tests developed by the Web Standards Project .

That said, we hope you've found this article useful. If you have anything you'd like to add, such as a question or a comment, please provide feedback in our discussion forum.

Sign up for our daily newsletter

• Privacy Policy
• Advertise with Us

How to Change the User Agent in Safari for Mac

In order to let websites serve browser-specific settings and pages, your browser sends a string called user agent to the websites that you visit on your computer. That way the target website gets to know what browser you are using and serves the pages accordingly. While most websites look the same in every browser, some have specific files that are only rendered when using a specific browser, Safari, for example. If you wish to see how a site looks in a specific browser, you can change the user agent in Safari on your Mac and pretend to be another browser.

When you change the user agent string, it technically changes the way websites interact with your browser. For example, if a site has a file that only renders when you’re using Chrome for Android, you can change the user agent to Chrome for Android in Safari and see that site as if you’re viewing it for real on your Android device.

Here’s how you can go about doing that.

Changing the User Agent in Safari for Mac

Fire up Safari on your Mac from the dock.

Click on “Safari” in the top left corner and select “Preferences…” You will be taken to the preferences panel for your browser.

Once in the “Preferences” panel, click on the “Advanced” tab located in the top bar. It should open the advanced settings for your browser.

In the “Advanced” tab, you should see an option that says “Show Develop menu in menu bar.” Tick mark it, and it will add a new menu in the menu bar for you to change the user agent.

Pull down the new menu by clicking on “Develop” in the menu bar. Then select “User Agent,” and you should see a list of the predefined user agents that you can use right away with your browser. Click on any and it will be selected.

If you can’t find the user agent you want to use, click on “Other” in the menu, and it will let you manually specify one.

You should see a prompt asking you to enter a user agent string that you wish to use in Safari on your Mac. This part is usually used by the geeks or developers who know what a user agent looks like and how to write one. If you are unsure, you can use the help of the User Agent String website to try out various agents in your browser.

When you are done entering the string, click on “OK,” and it will save it for you.

To check whether the new user agent works or not, just visit any site that lets you check what browser you are using, and it will tell you the name of the browser depending on what user agent you provided in the previous step. I have provided the Opera Mini user agent thus the browser check site says I’m using Opera Mini, although my actual browser is Safari.

The user agent has been changed in Safari on your Mac, and you are now telling websites that you don’t use Safari but use another browser because the user agent string says so.

If you are looking to see how a website looks like in another browser without actually downloading it, you can use the above method and have Safari pretend to be the browser you want.

Our latest tutorials delivered straight to your inbox

Mahesh Makvana is a freelance tech writer who's written thousands of posts about various tech topics on various sites. He specializes in writing about Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android tech posts. He's been into the field for last eight years and hasn't spent a single day without tinkering around his devices.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

How do you change User Agent in Safari?

powerbook g4, Mac OS X (10.5.2)

Posted on Feb 21, 2008 4:00 PM

Posted on Feb 21, 2008 4:10 PM

Loading page content

Page content loaded

Feb 21, 2008 4:10 PM in response to jumptolive

Feb 21, 2008 4:23 PM in response to Hawaiian_Starman

Feb 21, 2008 4:24 PM in response to jumptolive

Feb 21, 2008 4:40 PM in response to Hawaiian_Starman

Feb 21, 2008 5:22 PM in response to jumptolive

Now for the next question, how do you view a webpage that is whitten in .aspx instead or .html?

Feb 21, 2008 5:42 PM in response to Hawaiian_Starman

Mar 23, 2008 5:36 PM in response to jumptolive

Mar 23, 2008 5:49 PM in response to jumptolive

Mar 23, 2008 6:45 PM in response to Hawaiian_Starman

Mar 23, 2008 7:02 PM in response to golabuk

Does anyone have a way to turn off "Automatically Chosen" as the default user agent setting and establish one of the profiles in the list as the new default profile? Thanks."

Apr 26, 2008 5:46 AM in response to lkrupp

May 14, 2008 6:55 PM in response to lkrupp

May 14, 2008 6:57 PM in response to chy

May 16, 2008 12:31 AM in response to golabuk

May 16, 2008 6:48 PM in response to ra5ul