Getting rendering engine version, not browser version

pbb72 · October 18, 2023, 3:46pm

Browsers on iOS devices always use the WebKit rendering engine, not their own. But in Matomo I am only able to view the browser version, rendering engine (without version) and OS version (without browser information).

What would be the best way to get information about the version of the rendering engine that my visitors are using?

heurteph-ei · October 20, 2023, 2:59pm

Hi @pbb72
Do you know if your version of Matomo supports Client Hints?

It seems this has been added in Matomo 4.12

github.com/matomo-org/matomo

support Sec-CH-UA Client Hints in addition to UserAgent

opened 10:59AM - 26 Jun 20 UTC

closed 05:43PM - 04 Jul 22 UTC

Findus23

Enhancement Critical

(I thought I wrote about this before, but couldn't find an issue) The Chrome …team is working on a large change that plans to deprecate the user-agent string. The current(?) Chrome 83 already freezes the string and Chrome 85 will unify it to one common string for all desktop and one for all mobile users. As a replacement the client hints standard is proposed: https://github.com/WICG/ua-client-hints This allows to get similar data about a device already separated by things like brand, browser, os, etc. (meaning device-detector would not be needed anymore). There is both an HTTP header (that only returns non-vague results if the server requests them) and a JS API for accessing the data. ### Things that might complicate this: #### the main UA value is not a string, but a list/set `Chrome"; v="73", "ChromiumBasedBrowser"; v="60", "Chromium"; v="73"` (and the corresponding dictionary from JS) is a valid response and browser vendors are encouraged to "randomly [include] additional, intentionally incorrect, comma-separated entries with arbitrary ordering". --------------- It seems like at the moment only Chromium-based browsers are working on implementing this standard, but as it seems like these are by far the majority now, that doesn't really matter. I added this to 4.0 RC for now as it impacts every Matomo user as the most popular user agent will display incorrect results. Links: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!msg/blink-dev/-2JIRNMWJ7s/yHe4tQNLCgAJ https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/5995832180473856 https://github.com/WICG/ua-client-hints https://wicg.github.io/client-hints-infrastructure/ `https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/202#issuecomment-558294095` (Position of the firefox team on this standard)

pbb72 · November 8, 2023, 1:33pm

Hi Philippe,

We’re using Matomo 4.13.3, so that should be supporting Client Hints. But if I understand correctly, that doesn’t help me. Client Hints are just an alternative (more precise) way to identify the browser.

How does that help me retrieve the information out of Matomo? Is there a way I can see the rendering engine version my visitors are using?

heurteph-ei · November 9, 2023, 4:43pm

Hi @pbb72
I am not sure how Apple hides these information… (And I don’t own such device)
Can you try to check HTTP User Agent and Client Hints in case of Apple/Webkit device? Matomo won’t be able to gess the information if the browser doesn’t give it…