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We've been receiving loads of new access to our landing page through an app and almost all users are using Android (possible to verify by looking at Public > Technology > Browsers & OS). I've tested the app and the page is loaded using the device's browser in-app.

However device category is being interpreted as desktop for every Android user that access it that way. Therefore on the "Real Time" tab it shows that more than 80% of visitors are coming from desktop which can confuse a lot of people including our clients. Real time report Public browser and device report

Is there a way to either

  1. Tell Analytics that all Android devices should be considered mobile?
  2. Edit real time report to show browser and not device category, as it's showing correctly?
  3. Is there something I can do in my viewport meta tag to help this? It's currently <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=1, user-scalable=no">

Thank you!

Digger
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    this seems to be something related to options of in-app browser instance. could you please elaborate on your app environment and launch of the in-app browser? – Дмитро Булах Dec 15 '18 at 22:35
  • Not sure I know enough to go deep into it because it's all handled by the client. I can describe it as an external user: It's a in-app notification that was recently shown to the users with the link to our LP. Once the user clicks the link in the notification, the in-app browser (default Android browser) opens up with the header respecting the app's colour scheme. One information that might help is that in GA is not being able to detect the browser version or even the OS (coming as "not set"). – Digger Dec 17 '18 at 15:59
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    https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11381673/detecting-a-mobile-browser Maybe is that helping you. – Chris van Chip Dec 18 '18 at 16:56

1 Answers1

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What is happening here is most likely due to a UserAgent string being set to null (or empty string) in the android source code for the WebView element.

In the abscence of a user-agent string, analytics would still detect the browser because WebView (Android version 4 and above) always attempt to modify the user-agent to notify servers that the request is coming from a WebView browser. But Google will not detect the device because the UserAgent was null or empty and the only thing that Google Analytics server can read off the user-agent string is that the browser is an Android browser.

Google Analytics will default to desktop if it cannot detect the device off the UserAgent.

Possible Solution:

Ask your developer to set the UserAgent of the WebView to Android's default (He will understand this).

  • That was what I was afraid of. The app is kinda big and it'll take them months to implement that simple change. Do you think there is anything I can do on the page itself to mitigate this? – Digger Dec 21 '18 at 17:44
  • Honestly speaking, no matter how big the app is, if it has been creating with the right structure, it should be quite simple to change. This may even be as simple as a line of code. The real developers should have no difficulty doing this. As to what you can do on the page itself, I will try something in my head now and edit the answer if it works with the code. –  Dec 21 '18 at 21:00