In the user agent string on macOS, cap the reported OS version number to 10_15_7. Mozilla's Firefox team and Apple's Safari team have encountered a long tail of broken web content when the user agent string reports "Mac OS X 11_0_0" - basically, any macOS major version greater than 10. Per http://crbug.com/1175225 , both browsers have capped the reported macOS version to 10_15_7 to both work around this, and also slightly increase user privacy. We would like Chrome to follow this precedent.

Motivation

Mozilla's Firefox team and Apple's Safari team have encountered a long tail of broken web content when the user agent string reports "Mac OS X 11_0_0" - basically, any macOS major version greater than 10. Per http://crbug.com/1175225 , both browsers have capped the reported macOS version to 10_15_7 to both work around this, and also slightly increase user privacy. We would like Chrome to follow this precedent.

Demo

• https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1171998

Documentation

• https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1175225

Specification

Editor's draft

Status in Chromium

Blink components: Blink>Network

No active development (tracking bug)

Consensus & Standardization

• Firefox: Shipped/Shipping
• Edge: No signal
• Safari: Shipped/Shipping
• Web Developers: Positive

Owner

• kbr@chromium.org

Comments

CL up for consideration which makes this change: https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/2667135/

Last updated on 2021-02-09