detect ipad/iphone webview via javascript

This uses a combination of window.navigator.userAgent and window.navigator.standalone. It can distinguish between all four states relating to an iOS web app: safari (browser), standalone (fullscreen), uiwebview, and not iOS.

Demo: http://jsfiddle.net/ThinkingStiff/6qrbn/

var standalone = window.navigator.standalone,    userAgent = window.navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase(),    safari = /safari/.test( userAgent ),    ios = /iphone|ipod|ipad/.test( userAgent );if( ios ) {    if ( !standalone && safari ) {        //browser    } else if ( standalone && !safari ) {        //standalone    } else if ( !standalone && !safari ) {        //uiwebview    };} else {    //not iOS};

User Agents

Running in UIWebView

Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; CPU OS 5_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/98176

Running in Safari on iPad

Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; CPU OS 5_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B176 Safari/7534.48.3

Running in Safari on Mac OS X

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_7_3) AppleWebKit/534.55.3 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1.5 Safari/534.55.3

Running in Chrome on Mac OS X

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_7_3) AppleWebKit/535.19 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/18.0.1025.151 Safari/535.19

Running in FireFox on Mac OS X

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; rv:11.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/11.0

Detection Code

var is_uiwebview = /(iPhone|iPod|iPad).*AppleWebKit(?!.*Safari)/i.test(navigator.userAgent);var is_safari_or_uiwebview = /(iPhone|iPod|iPad).*AppleWebKit/i.test(navigator.userAgent);

I think that you can just use the User-Agent.

UPDATE

Page browsed using iPhone Safari

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7

I will try in a second with UIWebView

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/8B117

The difference is that the Safari one says Safari/6531.22.7

Solution

var isSafari = navigator.userAgent.match(/Safari/i) != null;