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Detect Windows 11 and CPU architecture using User-Agent Client Hints

  • Artikkeli

Websites can differentiate between users on Windows 11 and Windows 10, and detect the CPU architecture of the device, by using User-Agent Client Hints (UA-CH). The User-Agent Client Hints format is used by browsers to provide user agent information to websites.

Websites can also use the user agent information that's sent from the browser to detect information such as:

  • The browser brand.
  • The browser version number.
  • The device platform on which the browser is running.

There are two approaches for sites to access user agent information:

  • User-Agent strings (legacy).
  • User-Agent Client Hints (recommended).

For details about these two approaches, see Detecting Microsoft Edge from your website.

In Microsoft Edge (and also in Google Chrome), sites can differentiate between users on Windows 11 and Windows 10, and can detect the CPU architecture of the device, via User-Agent Client Hints (UA-CH). This information can be found in the following UA-CH request headers:

Header field Values that indicate Windows 10 Values that indicate Windows 11
Sec-CH-UA-Platform Windows Windows
Sec-CH-UA-Platform-Version values between 1.0.0 and 10.0.0 13.0.0 and above

User-Agent strings won't be updated to differentiate between Windows 11 and Windows 10, or to differentiate between CPU architectures. We don't recommend using User-Agent strings to retrieve user agent data. Browsers that don't support User-Agent Client Hints won't be able to differentiate between Windows 11 and Windows 10, or between CPU architectures.

Browsers that support User-Agent Client Hints

The following table shows which browsers support differentiating between Windows 11 and Windows 10, and between different CPU architectures.

Browser Supports differentiation via User-Agent Client Hints?
Microsoft Edge Yes
Chrome Yes
Opera Yes
Firefox No
Internet Explorer 11 No

Sample code for detecting Windows 11

The following code detects Windows 11:

navigator.userAgentData.getHighEntropyValues(["platformVersion"])
 .then(ua => {
   if (navigator.userAgentData.platform === "Windows") {
     const majorPlatformVersion = parseInt(ua.platformVersion.split('.')[0]);
     if (majorPlatformVersion >= 13) {
       console.log("Windows 11 or later");
      }
      else if (majorPlatformVersion > 0) {
        console.log("Windows 10");
      }
      else {
        console.log("Before Windows 10");
      }
   }
   else {
     console.log("Not running on Windows");
   }
 });

Sample code for detecting ARM or x86

Use detection of CPU architecture to have your website automatically download the version of your app that's built specifically for the user's CPU.

CPU detection is particularly helpful for ARM-based devices, so that a customer using an ARM device automatically downloads the native ARM version of an application. This prevents the user from inadvertently installing an app that's built for x86, and then experiencing reduced performance due to emulation.

The following code detects CPU architecture:

navigator.userAgentData.getHighEntropyValues(["architecture", "bitness"])
 .then(ua => {
   if (navigator.userAgentData.platform === "Windows") {
     if (ua.architecture === 'x86') {
       if (ua.bitness === '64') {
         console.log("x86_64");
       }
       else if (ua.bitness === '32') {
         console.log("x86");
       }
     }
     else if (ua.architecture === 'arm') {
       if (ua.bitness === '64') {
         console.log("ARM64");
       }
       else if (ua.bitness === '32') {
         console.log("ARM32");
       }
     }
   }
   else {
     console.log("Not running on Windows");
   }
 });

Optimizing detection performance with Critical-CH

Currently, website servers must send the Accept-CH response header to the browser client to request higher entropy fields not sent in the Sec-CH-UA header by default. The following diagram shows the browser sending request headers to the server including user agent: <UA string> and receiving response headers including Accept-CH: sec-ch-ua-platform.

Requests using only Accept-CH header

During this initial request, the client will record the Accept-CH preferences and on subsequent requests include sec-ch-ua-platform by default.

To further optimize this flow, the new Critical-CH header can be used in addition to the Accept-CH header to reissue the request header immediately, without the need for a page reload. The following diagram shows the browser sending request headers to the server including user agent: <UA string> and receiving response headers including Accept-CH: sec-ch-ua-platform and Critical-CH: sec-ch-ua-platform. The browser then sends request headers to the server immediately.

Requests using Critical-CH and Accept-CH headers

You can use the Critical-CH header to receive desired high entropy headers with optimized performance.

Remember that Critical-CH and Accept-CH preferences persist until session cookies are cleared, or until a user clears site data or cookies for a given origin. For more information about Critical-CH, refer to Client Hint Reliability.

Detecting specific Windows versions

The definition of the platform versions returned by the navigator.userAgentData.getHighEntropyValues API for the "platformVersion" hint (and via the Sec-CH-UA-Platform-Version header) is specified in the User-Agent Client Hints Draft Community Group Report. On Windows 10 and higher, the value is based on the Windows.Foundation.UniversalApiContract version.

To detect specific versions of Windows, use the following values for platformVersion in User-Agent Client Hints:

Version First version component of the platformVersion
Win7/8/8.1 0
Win10 1507 1
Win10 1511 2
Win10 1607 3
Win10 1703 4
Win10 1709 5
Win10 1803 6
Win10 1809 7
Win10 1903 8
Win10 1909 8
Win10 2004 10
Win10 20H2 10
Win10 21H1 10
Win10 21H2 10
Win11 13+