How to find the operating system version using Jav

Question

How can I find the OS name and OS version using JavaScript?

Answer 1

JavaScript have access to the window.navigator.platform - a string representing the platform of the browser: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/window.navigator.platform

Use it to extract whatever details you need (and can). Note that there are no guarantees that the client actually uses that platform since this can easily be modified in many ways.

Answer 2

If you list all of window.navigator's properties using

console.log(navigator);

You'll see something like this

# platform = Win32
# appCodeName = Mozilla
# appName = Netscape
# appVersion = 5.0 (Windows; en-US)
# language = en-US
# mimeTypes = [object MimeTypeArray]
# oscpu = Windows NT 5.1
# vendor = Firefox
# vendorSub = 1.0.7
# product = Gecko
# productSub = 20050915
# plugins = [object PluginArray]
# securityPolicy =
# userAgent = Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915 Firefox/1.0.7
# cookieEnabled = true
# javaEnabled = function javaEnabled() { [native code] }
# taintEnabled = function taintEnabled() { [native code] }
# preference = function preference() { [native code] }

Note that oscpu attribute gives you the Windows version. Also, you should know that:

'Windows 3.11' => 'Win16',
'Windows 95' => '(Windows 95)|(Win95)|(Windows_95)',
'Windows 98' => '(Windows 98)|(Win98)',
'Windows 2000' => '(Windows NT 5.0)|(Windows 2000)',
'Windows XP' => '(Windows NT 5.1)|(Windows XP)',
'Windows Server 2003' => '(Windows NT 5.2)',
'Windows Vista' => '(Windows NT 6.0)',
'Windows 7' => '(Windows NT 6.1)',
'Windows 8' => '(Windows NT 6.2)|(WOW64)',
'Windows 10' => '(Windows 10.0)|(Windows NT 10.0)',
'Windows NT 4.0' => '(Windows NT 4.0)|(WinNT4.0)|(WinNT)|(Windows NT)',
'Windows ME' => 'Windows ME',
'Open BSD' => 'OpenBSD',
'Sun OS' => 'SunOS',
'Linux' => '(Linux)|(X11)',
'Mac OS' => '(Mac_PowerPC)|(Macintosh)',
'QNX' => 'QNX',
'BeOS' => 'BeOS',
'OS/2' => 'OS/2',
'Search Bot'=>'(nuhk)|(Googlebot)|(Yammybot)|(Openbot)|(Slurp)|(MSNBot)|(Ask Jeeves/Teoma)|(ia_archiver)'

Answer 3

You can use this javascript function to check users' OS simply

  function getOS() {
  var userAgent = window.navigator.userAgent,
      platform = window.navigator.platform,
      macosPlatforms = ['Macintosh', 'MacIntel', 'MacPPC', 'Mac68K'],
      windowsPlatforms = ['Win32', 'Win64', 'Windows', 'WinCE'],
      iosPlatforms = ['iPhone', 'iPad', 'iPod'],
      os = null;

  if (macosPlatforms.indexOf(platform) !== -1) {
    os = 'Mac OS';
  } else if (iosPlatforms.indexOf(platform) !== -1) {
    os = 'iOS';
  } else if (windowsPlatforms.indexOf(platform) !== -1) {
    os = 'Windows';
  } else if (/Android/.test(userAgent)) {
    os = 'Android';
  } else if (!os && /Linux/.test(platform)) {
    os = 'Linux';
  }

  return os;
}

alert(getOS());

Answer 4

platform.js seems like a good one file library to do this.

Usage example:

// on IE10 x86 platform preview running in IE7 compatibility mode on Windows 7 64 bit edition
platform.name; // 'IE'
platform.version; // '10.0'
platform.layout; // 'Trident'
platform.os; // 'Windows Server 2008 R2 / 7 x64'
platform.description; // 'IE 10.0 x86 (platform preview; running in IE 7 mode) on Windows Server 2008 R2 / 7 x64'

// or on an iPad
platform.name; // 'Safari'
platform.version; // '5.1'
platform.product; // 'iPad'
platform.manufacturer; // 'Apple'
platform.layout; // 'WebKit'
platform.os; // 'iOS 5.0'
platform.description; // 'Safari 5.1 on Apple iPad (iOS 5.0)'

// or parsing a given UA string
var info = platform.parse('Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.7.2; en; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0 Opera 11.52');
info.name; // 'Opera'
info.version; // '11.52'
info.layout; // 'Presto'
info.os; // 'Mac OS X 10.7.2'
info.description; // 'Opera 11.52 (identifying as Firefox 4.0) on Mac OS X 10.7.2'

Answer 5

Use detectOS.js:

var Detect = {
    init: function () {
        this.OS = this.searchString(this.dataOS);
    },
    searchString: function (data) {
        for (var i=0;i<data.length;i++) {
            var dataString = data[i].string;
            var dataProp = data[i].prop;
            if (dataString) {
                if (dataString.indexOf(data[i].subString) != -1)
                    return data[i].identity;
            }
            else if (dataProp)
                return data[i].identity;
        }
    },
    dataOS : [
        {
            string: navigator.platform,
            subString: 'Win',
            identity: 'Windows'
        },
        {
            string: navigator.platform,
            subString: 'Mac',
            identity: 'macOS'
        },
        {
            string: navigator.userAgent,
            subString: 'iPhone',
            identity: 'iOS'
        },
        {
            string: navigator.userAgent,
            subString: 'iPad',
            identity: 'iOS'
        },
        {
            string: navigator.userAgent,
            subString: 'iPod',
            identity: 'iOS'
        },
        {
            string: navigator.userAgent,
            subString: 'Android',
            identity: 'Android'
        },
        {
            string: navigator.platform,
            subString: 'Linux',
            identity: 'Linux'
        }
    ]
};

Detect.init();

console.log("We know your OS – it's " + Detect.OS + ". We know everything about you.");

Answer 6

Hey for a quick solution you can consider the following library : UAPARSER - https://www.npmjs.com/package/ua-parser-js

example :

<script type="text/javascript" src="ua-parser.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">

var parser = new UAParser();
console.log(parser.getOS()) // will log  {name: "", version:""}

you can also install the library via npm, and import it like this:

import { UAParser } from 'ua-parser-js';
let parser = new UAParser();
parser.getOS();

the library is a JS based user agent string parser (window.navigator.userAgent is the user agent on browser) , so you can get with it other details aswell such as Browser,device,engines etc..and it can work with node js as well.

if you need typing for the library : https://www.npmjs.com/package/@types/ua-parser-js