PyMobileDetect

1.3.2 · active · verified Fri Apr 17

PyMobileDetect is a Python library that detects mobile and tablet browsers based on the User-Agent string. It is a port of the popular PHP Mobile Detect library. The current version is 1.3.2, with releases being infrequent but stable, primarily aligning with updates to the underlying detection rules.

Common errors

```
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'pymobiledetect'
```
cause Attempting to import from 'pymobiledetect' directly, instead of 'mobiledetect'.

fix Change your import statement from `from pymobiledetect import MobileDetect` to `from mobiledetect import MobileDetect`.
```
TypeError: MobileDetect() missing 1 required positional argument: 'user_agent'
```
cause The `MobileDetect` class requires a User-Agent string upon instantiation.

fix Provide a User-Agent string when creating an instance, e.g., `detector = MobileDetect(user_agent='...')`. In web applications, this typically comes from `request.headers['User-Agent']`.
```
My new device is detected as desktop/generic, but it's a mobile!
```
cause The installed version of `pymobiledetect` might not have the latest detection rules for very new devices or browser versions.

fix Ensure you have the latest version of `pymobiledetect` installed via `pip install --upgrade pymobiledetect`. If the issue persists, the underlying detection rules (inherited from the PHP project) might not yet include data for your specific device.

Warnings

gotcha The package name on PyPI is `pymobiledetect`, but the Python module you need to import is `mobiledetect`. Importing directly from `pymobiledetect` will result in a `ModuleNotFoundError`.
Fix: Always use `from mobiledetect import MobileDetect` after `pip install pymobiledetect`.
gotcha The detection rules are static within the installed library version and do not auto-update. Newer devices, operating systems, or browser versions released after the library's last update might not be correctly identified.
Fix: Ensure you are using the latest available version of `pymobiledetect`. For critical applications, consider regularly reviewing its detection accuracy against new User-Agent strings and updating the library.
gotcha Detection accuracy is entirely dependent on the provided User-Agent string. Spoofed, incomplete, or malformed User-Agents will lead to incorrect or failed detection.
Fix: Always pass the full and accurate User-Agent string received from the client. Validate or sanitize inputs if there's a risk of malformed data.

Install

pip install pymobiledetect Install stable version

Imports

MobileDetect
wrong:
```
from pymobiledetect import MobileDetect
```
correct:
```
from mobiledetect import MobileDetect
```
The PyPI package is 'pymobiledetect', but the module to import is 'mobiledetect'.

Quickstart

Initialize MobileDetect with a User-Agent string and use its methods to check device type and properties. The User-Agent string is crucial for correct detection.

from mobiledetect import MobileDetect

# Simulate a User-Agent string (e.g., from an HTTP request header)
# In a web framework, you would get this from request.headers.get('User-Agent', '')
user_agent = 'Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 10; SM-G973F) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/100.0.4896.127 Mobile Safari/537.36'

detector = MobileDetect(user_agent=user_agent)

if detector.is_mobile():
    print("This is a mobile device.")
elif detector.is_tablet():
    print("This is a tablet device.")
else:
    print("This is a desktop device.")

# Check for specific properties
if detector.is_android():
    print("Operating system: Android")
if detector.is_chrome():
    print("Browser: Chrome")

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