Full desktop experience on Firefox for Android
Device: Samsung Galaxy A5 2016 (A510F) System: Android 6.0.1 Firefox: 47
In one way or another, some websites still sense that I'm using a mobile platform, despite trying to disguise. This is a small list of the things I have tried untill this moment:
- Requesting desktop site - Enabling 'Do not track' and 'Tracking Protection' from Settings in Firefox - Toggling privacy.trackingprotection boolean to true for all sites in about:config - Adding general.useragent.overrirde string stating different Windows versions and Firefox/Gecko versions - Trying out addons that enable desktop mode for web pages by default ('Desktop as Default')
Could you help me out? I need a way to experience full desktop experience without websites detecting that I'm on Android, Firefox for Android, or both.
All Replies (4)
Hi
Requesting desktop site will display the sites as you would see it on a desktop copy of Firefox. With you having tried that, I am not quite sure what you mean by a "full desktop experience"?
Can you give me some info around what you expect by that?
Is the override working? You can view your useragent string on this page as a test:
https://www.jeffersonscher.com/res/jstest.php
Some sites have a responsive design that lays out pages based on your reported screen resolution. By default, Firefox for Android will report a lower screen resolution to websites than you expect because rendering at true screen pixel size makes everything very tiny. On mine, for example, the value is divided by 3: in portrait mode, instead of full HD (1080x1776, since soft buttons take up some of the pixels), sites are told it is a 360x592 screen.
You can experiment with changing how Firefox handles this but on a screen that is nearly the size of yours (a bit smaller), I didn't like the results that much...
(0) Have a tab open to a page that you want to size differently.
(1) Open a new tab to about:config (type about:config in the Awesomebar and tap the go arrow or tap Enter).
You may want to bookmark this for easier future access.
(2) In the search box, type px and pause while Firefox filters the list
(3) Tap the -1.0 under layout.css.devPixelsPerPx and then tap it again to place a cursor next to the number. Edit it to 2 and then tap the preference name to save it. The text size on the page should immediately adjust.
(4) Switch to the other tab and check the difference. You might need to reload the page if it isn't monitoring for changes.
(5) Repeat steps 3 and 4 until you find a good number (it could be 1.5, for example), but don't go below 1.0 because you may end up making everything so small you can't recover. If at any time it goes haywire, try tapping the tiny "Reset" button at the lower right corner of the preference.
What do you think?
Seburo said
Requesting desktop site will display the sites as you would see it on a desktop copy of Firefox. With you having tried that, I am not quite sure what you mean by a "full desktop experience"?
By "full desktop experience" I mean the following: - Pages are displayed in native (Full HD) resolution; - The format, or type of the page displayed is true desktop page, not a page that has been formated to suit a bigger mobile platform like a tablet; - Websites do not know by any means that I'm using a mobile platform; I want them to think that I'm at my PC on a >20" monitor; - Everything looks and works exactly the same as on the PC
jscher2000 said
Thank you very much for the help! I have already tried doing the things you posted. - Set "layout.css.devPixelPerPx" to 1 - Create string and set "general.useragent.override" to "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:47.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/47.0.1" The test page https://www.jeffersonscher.com/res/jstest.php, as well as https://www.whatismybrowser.com/ both confirm that the useragent and the pixel ratio are those, which I have chosen.
Still, I can confirm that Youtube somehow senses that I'm on mobile, because right after loading the homepage, it rescales it and hides the left panel, as well as making the home page recommendations in 4 rows instead of 6.
I'm starting to think that the problem may have something to do with the reported screen size in inches (mine is 5.2"), or maybe the reported physical dpi/ppi (mine is about 424 pixels per inch). Another thing I'm considering is some kind of a script that runs through SOME sites, which gets information out of the system to differentiate it from a PC.
cow.bell said
I'm starting to think that the problem may have something to do with the reported screen size in inches (mine is 5.2"), or maybe the reported physical dpi/ppi (mine is about 424 pixels per inch). Another thing I'm considering is some kind of a script that runs through SOME sites, which gets information out of the system to differentiate it from a PC.
Probably Google knows all the tricks since it has such an intimate relationship with Android...