Check if is supported

Question

Is it possible to check if a phone number hyperlink is supported by a browser? EG: Check if

<a href="tel:555555555">Call us on 555555555</a>

will work.

I'm trying to avoid the "Cannot open page. Safari cannot open the page because the address is invalid." type messages on things like iPod/iPad etc.

Thanks.

Don't think so. Skype handles them for instance (I think) if it's installed with plugin, so it's not that clear cut. — Rich Bradshaw, May 29 '13 at 09:38
possible duplicate of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13675535 — , May 29 '13 at 09:38
if its supported at all, it's likely to be a browser plugin rather than native support, so I doubt the browser will tell you anything helpful about that. — Spudley, May 29 '13 at 09:38
what do you mean by "phone number hyperlink"? on click call or else... — Jai, May 29 '13 at 09:39
So is this a specific mobile application? If so, the `href="tel:"` is supported on almost every browser. — Alex, May 29 '13 at 09:42
Also this is potentially a dupe of this question - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12141909/detecting-html-a-click-to-call-support-in-javascript — Alex, May 29 '13 at 09:43
@AlexThomas No. It's not a mobile application, it's a responsive site so can be hit by pretty much any borwser out there. — Strontium_99, May 29 '13 at 09:49
@user1001421 see [this question](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12141909/detecting-html-a-click-to-call-support-in-javascript), this should help with the *checking* — Alex, May 29 '13 at 09:54
@AlexThomas Thanks for the response, but it doesn't really help. That seems to just check if the device is a Nokia and changes tel: to wtai://wp/mc; — Strontium_99, May 29 '13 at 09:59
@user1001421 - True, but it shows that you could detect if its a mobile, and if it's not, remove the `tel:` — Alex, May 29 '13 at 10:06
I dont know if it is relevant or not... but would the browser think that 'tel' is a protocol? if you want to check if a protocol is accepted by the browser : http://www.rajeshsegu.com/2012/09/browser-detect-custom-protocols/. I dont know if it could help or even work here — mlwacosmos, May 29 '13 at 10:29
possible duplicate of [How to launch apps (facebook/twitter/etc) from mobile browser but fall back to hyperlink if the app isn't installed](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13675535/how-to-launch-apps-facebook-twitter-etc-from-mobile-browser-but-fall-back-to-h) — Benjamin Gruenbaum, May 30 '13 at 01:42
try this http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17345177/use-jquery-to-detect-whether-a-device-can-make-telephone-calls-supports-tel or you can check the feature with something like modernizr — keypaul, Sep 12 '14 at 07:41

score 3 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:22

On desktop Skype uses the "callto:" spec instead of "tel:"

I think you could use css for this.

Just add some @media rules:

.telClass { display: none; }
.callToClass { display: block; } 

@media only screen and (max-device-width: 480px) {
    .tel-class { display: block; }
    .call-to-class { display: none; }
}

Then you could define two elements in html:

<a href="tel:555555555" class="tel-class">Call us on 555555555</a> 
<a href="callto:555555555" class="call-to-class">Call us on 555555555</a>

For a more complex code you could add some javascript code to check if the device is a handheld one:

if( /Android|webOS|iPhone|iPad|iPod|BlackBerry|IEMobile|Opera Mini/i.test(navigator.userAgent) ) {
   var callToArray = document.getElementsByClassName('call-to-class');
   callToArray.forEach(function(c) {
      c.parentElement.removeChild(c);
   });
}

Also there is a nice answer here by ghepting on how to to detect if skype is installed or not.

Check if is supported

1 Answers1

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