What is a user agent?
The user-agent string is a header your browser sends with every HTTP request. It identifies the browser, the operating system, and (sometimes) the device. Servers use it to serve appropriate content — desktop layouts to desktops, mobile layouts to phones, and so on.
The string above is what your current browser is sending. Different browsers and OS combinations produce different strings. Scrapers and bots set their own user agents, which is why most sites check this header as one (weak) signal of bot vs human traffic.
Why this matters for proxies and scraping
- Matching content to traffic source — if you scrape mobile prices but send a desktop user-agent, you get desktop pricing. Configure your scraper’s user-agent to match the audience you want to see.
- Rotating user agents for anti-bot evasion — sites that look for repeated identical user-agents flag scrapers. Rotating across realistic strings helps.
- Detecting your own client’s identity — when debugging a scraper or HTTP client, this page tells you what your code is actually sending.
Tips
Always use a realistic, current user-agent string. Outdated strings (Chrome 60, Firefox 50) are red flags to anti-bot platforms. The simplest source for current strings is opening this page in the browser you want to mimic and copying the string above.
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