Tell iPadOS from macOS on the web

Question

The user agent of Safari on iPadOS beta is at this point exactly the same as Safari on macOS. Is there any other way to tell an iPad from a Mac?

iPad running iOS
Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; CPU OS 10_3_3 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/603.3.8 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/10.0 Mobile/14G60 Safari/602.1

iPadOS, developer beta 1
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/13.0 Safari/605.1.15

iPadOS, beta 2, simulator
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/13.0 Safari/605.1.15

iPadOS, beta 3, (simulator)
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/13.0 Safari/605.1.15

iPadOS, developer beta 3
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/13.0 Safari/605.1.15

iPadOS, developer beta 4
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/13.0 Safari/605.1.15

iPadOS 13.1, developer beta 1
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/13.0 Safari/605.1.15

iPadOS 13.1, developer beta 2
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/13.0 Safari/605.1.15

iPadOS 13.1, developer beta 3
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/13.0.1 Safari/605.1.15

iPadOS 13.1, developer beta 4
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/13.0.1 Safari/605.1.15

macOS Catalina 
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/13.0 Safari/605.1.15

macOS (older version)
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_14_5) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/12.1.1 Safari/605.1.15

macOS Catalina developer beta 7
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/13.0 Safari/605.1.15

macOS Catalina developer beta 8
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/13.0.1 Safari/605.1.15

When playing HLS video, the iPadOS agent seems to be:

AppleCoreMedia/1.0.0.17A5821e (iPad; U; CPU OS 13_1 like Mac OS X; en_us)

Answer 1

I would not generally recommend this, and I haven't tested it much (using something similar in production since September 2019), but one way could be to detect the existence of TouchEvent on the client side, and match it with the state of the user agent to account for older iOS versions of iPad:s. YMMV. Likely not very future safe.

function isIpad() {
    const ua = window.navigator.userAgent;
    if (ua.indexOf('iPad') > -1) {
        return true;
    }

    if (ua.indexOf('Macintosh') > -1) {
        try {
            document.createEvent("TouchEvent");
            return true;
        } catch (e) {}
    }

    return false;
}

Answer 2

I'm using this test client side:

   if (navigator.userAgent.match(/Mac/) && navigator.maxTouchPoints && navigator.maxTouchPoints > 2) {
     ...must be iPad OS...

Since there's no official touch screen for Mac, it seems pretty safe. The actual value of maxTouchPoints on the iPad is 5, BTW.

Answer 3

I'm using this works fine:

const ua = window.navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase();
const isiPad = ua.indexOf('ipad') > -1 || ua.indexOf('macintosh') > -1 && 'ontouchend' in document;