How to detect iOS 6 and all minor versions by user agent?

Question

How to detect iOS 6 and all minor versions by user agent with a simple regex or something? Would be nice to distinct between iphone and ipad as well.

This question differs from What is the iOS 6 user agent string? since I wanted help in building a regex based on the information I already know (which can be found in the linked question)

Are you looking for any arbitrary iOS 6 user agent, or just Safari? — BoltClock, Sep 24 '12 at 14:39
Ideally all possible user agents but since Safari is the most common I think it may be a startpoint :) — dasheddot, Sep 24 '12 at 14:40
Thanks for your hint, but if somebody spoofs his user agent I am not willing to provide him with out cool device specific feature, so it's okay for my purposes. — dasheddot, Sep 24 '12 at 14:47
@Stephan Added link to another SO question with lists of user agent strings as answer. Any ideas how to detect these with some regexes? Thanks — dasheddot, Sep 25 '12 at 05:21
@dasheddot I have send an answer with a generic regex that should help you. — Stephan, Sep 25 '12 at 11:36
It's no duplicate, cause I wanted help in building a regex with the information I already know (that's what the duplicate question asks) — dasheddot, Sep 26 '12 at 12:43

score 27 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

CHANGELOG

20/01/2017

UA strings update: 141 matching, 0 partially matching, and 797 invalid lines

"Mobile Safari 1.1.3 (iPhone U; CPU like Mac OS X; en)" is considered invalid even if it mentions iPhone. Actually a semi-colon is missing after the iPhone term which is suspicious.

Safari 8+ doesn't appear yet on UserAgentString.com

PREREQUISITES

The following regex is generic.
It will match Safari user agent strings (SUAS) running on a mobile device (see below supported devices list).
The regex is based on known SUAS by UserAgentString.com as of 20/01/2017.

REGEX

^(?:(?:(?:Mozilla/\d\.\d\s*\()+|Mobile\s*Safari\s*\d+(?:\.\d+)+\s*)(?:iPhone(?:\s+Simulator)?|iPad|iPod);\s*(?:U;\s*)?(?:[a-z]+(?:-[a-z]+)?;\s*)?CPU\s*(?:iPhone\s*)?(?:OS\s*\d+_\d+(?:_\d+)?\s*)?(?:like|comme)\s*Mac\s*O?S?\s*X(?:;\s*[a-z]+(?:-[a-z]+)?)?\)\s*)?(?:AppleWebKit/\d+(?:\.\d+(?:\.\d+)?|\s*\+)?\s*)?(?:\(KHTML,\s*(?:like|comme)\s*Gecko\s*\)\s*)?(?:(?:Version|CriOS)/\d+(?:\.\d+)+\s*)?(?:Mobile/\w+\s*)?(?:Safari/\d+(?:\.\d+)*.*)?$

SUPPORTED DEVICES LIST

iPhone
iPhone Simulator
iPad
iPod

EXPLANATION / CUSTOMIZATION

Lines preceded by a C can be customized.

  1. ^(?:(?:(?:Mozilla/\d\.\d\s*\()+|Mobile\s*Safari\s*\d+(?:\.\d+)+\s*)
C 2.     (?:iPhone(?:\s+Simulator)?|iPad|iPod);\s*
  3.     (?:U;\s*)?
  4.     (?:[a-z]+(?:-[a-z]+)?;\s*)?
  5.     CPU\s*
  6.          (?:iPhone\s*)?
C 7.          (?:OS\s*\d+_\d+(?:_\d+)?\s*)?
C 8.          (?:like|comme)\s*Mac\s*O?S?\s*X
  9.      (?:;\s*[a-z]+(?:-[a-z]+)?)?
  10. \)\s*)?
  11. (?:AppleWebKit/\d+(?:\.\d+(?:\.\d+)?|\s*\+)?\s*)?
C 12. (?:\(KHTML,\s*(?:like|comme)\s*Gecko\s*\)\s*)?
C 13. (?:(?:Version|CriOS)/\d+(?:\.\d+)+\s*)?
  14. (?:Mobile/\w+\s*)?
  15. (?:Safari/\d+(?:\.\d+)*.*)?$

line 1. UA strings may differ so this line is introduced for accepting UA strings as much as possible.
line 2. You can specify here the piped-separated list of accepted devices.
(...)
line 7. The version is indicated here. Change this line if you want a special version. Don't forget to update line 13 too. For instance, matching iOS 5.x.y use (?:OS\s*5_\d+_\d+\s*)?.
line 8. Some user agent strings are translated. The word like may be translated into a foreign language. The regexp now supports English and French. Adapt this line if you encounter other languages. Don't forget to update line 12 too.
(...)
line 12. See line 8.
line 13. See line 7. For instance, matching iOS 5.x.y use (?:Version/5\.\d+\.\d+)?\s*)?.

Really cool!! Thank you so much for this high-quality answer on my not-so-high-quality question ;) Upvoted and marked as solution. Thanks! — dasheddot, Sep 26 '12 at 12:46
@Stephan: Np, but there's more actually: http://stackoverflow.com/a/12861494/89771 (see the comments). — Alix Axel, Oct 12 '12 at 15:46

How to detect iOS 6 and all minor versions by user agent?

1 Answers1

Linked