Using PHP to Detect iOS & Mobile  Users

This basic mobile_user_agent_switch() function will allow you to use PHP to detect iOS and mobile device visitors using one of the following:

Supported Devices

The mobile_user_agent_switch() Function

/*
*   Mobile device detection
*/
if( !function_exists('mobile_user_agent_switch') ){
    function mobile_user_agent_switch(){
        $device = '';

        if( stristr($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],'ipad') ) {
            $device = "ipad";
        } else if( stristr($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],'iphone') || strstr($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],'iphone') ) {
            $device = "iphone";
        } else if( stristr($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],'blackberry') ) {
            $device = "blackberry";
        } else if( stristr($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],'android') ) {
            $device = "android";
        }

        if( $device ) {
            return $device; 
        } return false; {
            return false;
        }
    }
}

The function will return one of the following values for you to work with in your code:

Hopefully this helps someone else out there!

Looking for more detail?

This is only the tip of the iceberg. If you’re looking for a detailed mobile detection script I suggest checking out the mobile device detect script provided by detectmobilebrowsers.mobi.

It provides a more detailed check that will include:

At the time this script was overkill for my needs, so I wrote the basic function above to provide a lean solution to suite my needs: A basic PHP function to check for major mobile devices.

Resources

Created / Updated