Google which is planning to deprecate and freeze User Agent String in Chrome on desktop and mobile, has added a flag to freeze UA request header in Canary version. If enabled, Chrome now displays its version number as 75 instead of 81 for User Agent String in chrome://version page on Windows and Android. Third-party tools also detect and say Chrome version as 75.
The “Freeze User-Agent request header” flag available on Chrome Canary in chrome://flags page when enabled sets “the User-Agent request header to a static string that conforms to the current User-Agent string format but only reveals desktop vs Android and if the mobile flag is set -Mac, Windows, Linux, Chrome OS, Android”.
Here is a little bit of background about the move by Google on its UA string. If you now visit chrome://verison page in Chrome browser, it reveals the information about the browser such as User Agent String, Profile path and executable path. Whenever you visit a website, it identifies the browser you’re using by detecting the UA and serves content according to that, this has been used by website developers to deny their site access in certain browsers.
Vivaldi and Firefox browsers mostly affected by this and their users when visited certain Google services and other specific sites, they’re asked to use the Chrome browser. That’s why the Vivaldi browser set their pride aside and dropped its name Vivaldi from its UA string and now shows Chrome’s UA string.
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The chromium team believes UA has been used as a tool to fingerprint their users, that’s why it wants to “freeze and unify (but not remove the User-Agent String in HTTP requests as well in “navigator.UserAgent”. Currently, via Chrome UA string, the browser tells websites the browser is Mozilla and Safari compatible on Windows, Mac, Linux, Chrome OS, and mobile platforms.
To address this issue, the company has laid out the following plan.
This is a long process, other browser vendor’s also taking part in this, as of now, Chromium team has added a flag to begin working on UA freezing process in Chrome browser.
