react-device-detect

What is react-device-detect?

The react-device-detect package is a tool for detecting device types and browser environments in a React application. It provides a set of hooks and components that allow developers to render content conditionally based on the user's device type, operating system, browser, and other device-specific characteristics.

What are react-device-detect's main functionalities?

Device Type Detection

Detects the type of device (mobile, tablet, desktop) and allows you to render content conditionally based on the device type.

import { isMobile, isTablet, isDesktop } from 'react-device-detect';

function MyComponent() {
  return (
    <div>
      {isMobile && <p>This is a mobile device.</p>}
      {isTablet && <p>This is a tablet device.</p>}
      {isDesktop && <p>This is a desktop device.</p>}
    </div>
  );
}

Browser Detection

Determines the browser being used (e.g., Chrome, Firefox) and enables conditional rendering of components or content for specific browsers.

import { isChrome, isFirefox } from 'react-device-detect';

function MyComponent() {
  return (
    <div>
      {isChrome && <p>This is viewed in Chrome.</p>}
      {isFirefox && <p>This is viewed in Firefox.</p>}
    </div>
  );
}

Operating System Detection

Identifies the operating system of the user's device (e.g., Android, iOS) and allows for OS-specific content or functionality.

import { isAndroid, isIOS } from 'react-device-detect';

function MyComponent() {
  return (
    <div>
      {isAndroid && <p>This is an Android device.</p>}
      {isIOS && <p>This is an iOS device.</p>}
    </div>
  );
}

Custom Hooks

Provides custom hooks that return an object with device detection booleans, allowing for more dynamic and custom implementations.

import { useDeviceDetect } from 'react-device-detect';

function MyComponent() {
  const { isMobile, isDesktop } = useDeviceDetect();
  return (
    <div>
      {isMobile && <p>Content for mobile</p>}
      {isDesktop && <p>Content for desktop</p>}
    </div>
  );
}

Other packages similar to react-device-detect

mobile-detect

A package similar to react-device-detect that offers detailed mobile device detection, including phone/tablet detection, and can parse user-agent strings. It does not provide React-specific hooks or components.

ua-parser-js

This package is used for user-agent string parsing to identify browser, engine, OS, CPU, and device type/model. It is more general-purpose and not React-specific, unlike react-device-detect which provides React components and hooks.

react-responsive

A package that allows for the creation of responsive design in React applications using media queries. It is similar to react-device-detect in providing conditional rendering based on device characteristics but focuses more on responsive design rather than device detection.

README

react-device-detect

Detect device, and render view according to the detected device type.

Installation

To install, you can use npm or yarn:

npm install react-device-detect --save

or

yarn add react-device-detect

When to use this library

This library uses a technique called user agent sniffing to detect device information. That means it works by examining the User Agent string given by a browser and comparing it to a list of browser and device names it knows about. This technique works, but has drawbacks and may or may not be the right approach, depending on what you're trying to achieve. If you need to detect a specific browser type (e.g. Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer) or specific category of device (e.g. all iPods), this library can do that. If you just want your React app to behave differently or look different on mobiles in general, CSS @media queries and matchMedia are probably what you want. There are many libraries that can help with using @media queries and matchMedia in React projects, such as react-responsive and @react-hook/media-query.

API

• Hooks, SSR and utilities
• Selectors
• Views

Usage

Example:

import { BrowserView, MobileView, isBrowser, isMobile } from 'react-device-detect';

<BrowserView>
  <h1>This is rendered only in browser</h1>
</BrowserView>
<MobileView>
  <h1>This is rendered only on mobile</h1>
</MobileView>

if you don't need a view, you can use isMobile for conditional rendering

import {isMobile} from 'react-device-detect';

function App() {
  renderContent = () => {
    if (isMobile) {
      return <div> This content is available only on mobile</div>
    }
    return <div> ...content </div>
  }

  render() {
    return this.renderContent();
  }
}

If you want to leave a message to a specific browser (e.g IE), you can use isIE selector

import { isIE } from 'react-device-detect';

function App() {
  render() {
    if (isIE) return <div> IE is not supported. Download Chrome/Opera/Firefox </div>
    return (
      <div>...content</div>
    )
  }
}

If you want to render a view on a specific device and with a specific condition:

import { browserName, CustomView } from 'react-device-detect';

function App() {
  render() {
    return (
      <CustomView condition={browserName === "Chrome"}>
        <div>...content</div>
      </CustomView>
    )
  }
}

Style the view

You can style a view component by passing class to the className prop

<BrowserView className="custom-class">
  <p>View content</p>
</BrowserView>

or you can pass inline styles to style prop

const styles = {
  background: 'red',
  fontSize: '24px',
  lineHeight: '2',
};

<BrowserView style={styles}>
  <p>View content</p>
</BrowserView>

Testing

import * as rdd from 'react-device-detect';

rdd.isMobile = true;

// use in tests

License

MIT