mobile browser: masquerade as desktop browser
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To Vivaldi Browser developers:
Can you please include a new feature into the Vivaldi browser for android:
The android browser should have an option to masquerade as a desktop browser (possibly also masquerade as Microsoft Edge etc.).
This would be very useful, since many websites restrict what can be done using a mobile browser, but have no problem at all to do the same using a desktop browser especially running under the newest version of Microsoft Windows (Windows 10 as of now: June 2021).
For example: facebook.com lets to use a browser -based messenger on desktop browser, but not using a mobile browser. They suggest using an android app - but this is unavailable for anyone who don't have a google account on the mobile phone - and on many phones, installing a google account will copy all textmessages, phonebook and call log to a cloud server run by Google - for privacy reasons, I do not like this at all - this is the biggest threat to privacy in the 21th century !
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@anteroh , there are a UA switcher for Android which maybe serve you, but need root access.
https://m.apkpure.com/es/user-agent-switcher/com.useragent.chrome.
Let's see if another user has a better solution
Maybe you can try it with Vivaldi, searchin Facebook in the web and using the option to pin it in the startpage. In the setting of Vivaldi you have the option to access in Desktop version of a page.
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@anteroh You can click the Vivaldi icon in the UI to open the dropdown, which contains an item called “Desktop site”, which should display the desktop version of the webpage. Works for most pages.
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Found the "Show desktop page", but in facebook that does not help to make the messaging work.
It seems that facebook looks the user agent, and the "Show desktop page" only requests the desktop page (instead of a mobile version), but it still reveals to the web server that I am using a mobile device.
A real "masquerade-as-desktop-browser" -function would solve that, because from the web server's viewpoint it is a "desktop browser" if a mobile user activates a real "masquerade-as-desktop-browser" -function.
facebook is not the only one doing that.
Some finnish "look up phone number by name" or "look up name by phone number" -type of services are free (*) of charge if used from desktop browser, but there is a payment required if one uses the same URL from a mobile device (phone or tablet).
Some times there is a "pay 0,25€ to register" -one time fee, but as long as one does not forget the username and password, the payment is one time only - after the initial payment, the site is free to use from a desktop browser, but not from a mobile (in a mobile browser, a payment is required for every query).
I would not be surprised at all if some travel agency or airline makes mobile users pay more for flight tickets and let desktop users purchase flights at a cheaper price.
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@anteroh I don’t know how it works. I would assume that the user agent lookup is not the problem and that this case is handled by Vivaldi Android. The problem is Javascript allows webpages to additionally or alternatively check for the dimensions of the window and the screen size. Maybe one of these is not covered by Vivaldi.
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@anteroh said in mobile browser: masquerade as desktop browser:
I would not be surprised at all if some travel agency or airline makes mobile users pay more for flight tickets and let desktop users purchase flights at a cheaper price.
Actually true.
Almost every e-commerce site will give you different prices based on your device and/or post/zip code. -
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Trace block this site
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When I installed it, I got the "app not installed" message. What did I do wrong
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There are already two requests similar to this, so I'm closing this one.
https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/46613/user-agent-for-android
https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/40389/remove-device-name-from-user-agent
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LLonM moved this topic from Mobile Feature Requests on
