Bug 195976

Summary:	Thaw User Agent?
Product:	WebKit	Reporter:	eelco
Component:	New Bugs	Assignee:	Nobody <webkit-unassigned>
Status:	RESOLVED WONTFIX
Severity:	Enhancement	CC:	bfulgham, webkit-bug-importer, wilander
Priority:	P2	Keywords:	InRadar
Version:	Safari 12
Hardware:	All
OS:	All

Description eelco 2019-03-19 16:26:01 PDT

I understand the reasoning to freeze the User Agent (https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=180365), but it makes researching WebKit bugs as an outsider harder. Especially during betas and because not all releases are listed (https://trac.webkit.org/browser/webkit/releases/Apple).

A little bit of version information (other than the OS version) in the User Agent would go a long way (perhaps a truncated WebKit version), while still countering fingerprinting. I can’t imagine many people still using User Agent sniffing as feature detection in 2019, but you probably have a more complete idea about the numbers there.

Comment 1 Radar WebKit Bug Importer 2019-03-19 18:17:07 PDT

<rdar://problem/49044775>

Comment 2 Brent Fulgham 2019-03-19 19:43:27 PDT

I think the reasons we made this choice are well documented in Bug 180365. I'm sorry but we aren't interested in revisiting that topic.

You can obviously expose a UserAgent of your liking in a local build, but I think you are mostly interested in seeing the specific WebKit revision of a system in the wild (i.e., not one you control).

I wonder if documenting the specific WebKit revision in a given OS release would solve at least some of your problem. We do branch per release, and we might be able to make that visible somehow.