Safari for iOS displays mobile versions of web pages be default. If you wish to view full versions of web pages on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch using Safari, you will need to change the user agent string that is used. This hack will allow you to do so without having to jailbreak the device.
1. Connect and sync your iOS device with iTunes on your computer.
2. Download and install iBackupBot on your computer.
3. Disable automatic syncing in iTunes by going to Edit > Preferences > Devices and check Prevent iPods, iPhones and iPads from syncing automatically.
4. Close iTunes and launch iBackupBot.
5. Connect your device to the computer using the USB cable. iBackupBot should detect the device.
6. Select the latest backup you have on the left side.
7. Open the Library/Preferences/com.apple.mobilesafari.plist file. Click Cancel on the dialog that appears afterwards.
8. Scroll down to the bottom of the file and insert this line right above the line that says </dict>
<key>UserAgent</key>
<string>Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/535.11 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/17.0.963.56 Safari/535.11</string>
Be sure to click the Save disc icon, then close the file.
9. Check the box next to Library/Preferences/com.apple.mobilesafari.plist, then click the Restore button.
10 The device will go through the restore process. Once finished it should have successfully changed the user agent in Safari. Open Safari and you will be able to view the full desktop versions of web pages. You can also visit WhatIsMyUserAgent to check to see if it is changed.
Last modified March 21, 2012
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
This works–thanks for sharing. Very impractical to switch back and forth, however. I think I’ll just clog my phone with another app that can do UA switching. My time is worth the extra MBs it clogs..
You could do that, but I’m not sure why anybody would switch browsers and clog their phone with another app just to be able to view a desktop site.
Or just download the icab mobile browser which has the ability to use any User-Agent you prefer.