How to determine if the client is a touch device [duplicate]

Question

This question already has answers here:

What's the best way to detect a 'touch screen' device using JavaScript? (37 answers)

Closed 7 years ago.

is there any nice and clean method or trick to find out if the user is on a touch-device or not?

I know there is stuff like var isiPad = navigator.userAgent.match(/iPad/i) != null;

but I simply wonder if there is a trick to generally determine if the user is on Touch device? Because there are a lot more touch devices and tablets out there then just iPads.

thank you.

Answer 1

You can use the following JS function:

function isTouchDevice() {
   var el = document.createElement('div');
   el.setAttribute('ongesturestart', 'return;'); // or try "ontouchstart"
   return typeof el.ongesturestart === "function";
}

Source: Detecting touch-based browsing.

Please note the above code only tests if the browser has support for touch, not the device.

Related links:

• Optimize website for touch devices
• What is the best way to detect a mobile device in jQuery?
• What's the best way to detect a 'touch screen' device using JavaScript?
• Mozilla.org Detecting touch: it’s the ‘why’, not the ‘how’

There may be detection in jquery for mobile and jtouch

Answer 2

Include modernizer, which is a tiny feature detection library. Then you can use something like below.

if (Modernizr.touch){
   // bind to touchstart, touchmove, etc and watch `event.streamId`
} else {
   // bind to normal click, mousemove, etc
}

Answer 3

if ("ontouchstart" in document.documentElement)
{
  alert("It's a touch screen device.");
}
else
{
 alert("Others devices");
}

most simple code i found after browsing a lot here and there

Answer 4

Using document.createEvent("TouchEvent") will not work on desktop-devices. So you can use it inside an if statement.

Note that this method could produce errors on non-touch devices. I would prefer checking for ontouchstart in document.documentElement.

Answer 5

Check out this post, it gives a really nice code snippet for what to do when touch devices are detected or what to do if touchstart event is called:

$(function(){
  if(window.Touch) {
    touch_detect.auto_detected();
  } else {
    document.ontouchstart = touch_detect.surface;
  }
}); // End loaded jQuery
var touch_detect = {
  auto_detected: function(event){
    /* add everything you want to do onLoad here (eg. activating hover controls) */
    alert('this was auto detected');
    activateTouchArea();
  },
  surface: function(event){
    /* add everything you want to do ontouchstart here (eg. drag & drop) - you can fire this in both places */
    alert('this was detected by touching');
    activateTouchArea();
  }
}; // touch_detect
function activateTouchArea(){
  /* make sure our screen doesn't scroll when we move the "touchable area" */
  var element = document.getElementById('element_id');
  element.addEventListener("touchstart", touchStart, false);
}
function touchStart(event) {
  /* modularize preventing the default behavior so we can use it again */
  event.preventDefault();
}

Answer 6

If you use Modernizr, it is very easy to use Modernizr.touch as mentioned earlier.

However, I prefer using a combination of Modernizr.touch and user agent testing, just to be safe.

var deviceAgent = navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase();

var isTouchDevice = Modernizr.touch || 
(deviceAgent.match(/(iphone|ipod|ipad)/) ||
deviceAgent.match(/(android)/)  || 
deviceAgent.match(/(iemobile)/) || 
deviceAgent.match(/iphone/i) || 
deviceAgent.match(/ipad/i) || 
deviceAgent.match(/ipod/i) || 
deviceAgent.match(/blackberry/i) || 
deviceAgent.match(/bada/i));

if (isTouchDevice) {
        //Do something touchy
    } else {
        //Can't touch this
    }

If you don't use Modernizr, you can simply replace the Modernizr.touch function above with ('ontouchstart' in document.documentElement)

Also note that testing the user agent iemobile will give you broader range of detected Microsoft mobile devices than Windows Phone.

Also see this SO question