Bug 216593 – [macOS] Limit reported macOS release to 10.15 series

• Component: WebCore Misc.
• Status: RESOLVED FIXED

[Brent Fulgham]

The world apparently isn't ready for macOS 11.0 in User Agents. Because of the depressing UA sniffing code on the web, let's just report our current shipping release until things settle down.

[Brent Fulgham]

<rdar://68937905>

[Brent Fulgham]

Created attachment 408883 [details]
Patch

[Maciej Stachowiak]

Comment on attachment 408883 [details]
Patch

View in context: https://bugs.webkit.org/attachment.cgi?id=408883&action=review

> Source/WebCore/platform/mac/UserAgentMac.mm:39
> +        osVersion = "10_15_6"_s;

Why do it this roundabout way instead of hardcoding this to "10_15_6"_s always? Under what circumstances would osVersion not start with 10? And if we fully hardcoded it, maybe we could encode it directly in the template string, same as the AppleWebKit/ version number.

[Maciej Stachowiak]

Comment on attachment 408883 [details]
Patch

View in context: https://bugs.webkit.org/attachment.cgi?id=408883&action=review

r=me

>> Source/WebCore/platform/mac/UserAgentMac.mm:39
>> +        osVersion = "10_15_6"_s;
> 
> Why do it this roundabout way instead of hardcoding this to "10_15_6"_s always? Under what circumstances would osVersion not start with 10? And if we fully hardcoded it, maybe we could encode it directly in the template string, same as the AppleWebKit/ version number.

Oh, I understand now. This is to preserve original OS version on older macOS.

[Brent Fulgham]

(In reply to Maciej Stachowiak from comment #4)
> Comment on attachment 408883 [details]
> Patch
> 
> View in context:
> https://bugs.webkit.org/attachment.cgi?id=408883&action=review
> 
> r=me
> 
> >> Source/WebCore/platform/mac/UserAgentMac.mm:39
> >> +        osVersion = "10_15_6"_s;
> > 
> > Why do it this roundabout way instead of hardcoding this to "10_15_6"_s always? Under what circumstances would osVersion not start with 10? And if we fully hardcoded it, maybe we could encode it directly in the template string, same as the AppleWebKit/ version number.
> 
> Oh, I understand now. This is to preserve original OS version on older macOS.

Yes, exactly. That was Charles's request.

[EWS]

Committed r267148: <https://trac.webkit.org/changeset/267148>

All reviewed patches have been landed. Closing bug and clearing flags on attachment 408883 [details].

Out of curiosity, when will this be changed again?

Would a better option perhaps have been to change it to 10.16 instead (which is what older Xcode versions did)? So that Big Sur can still be detected?

[Ryosuke Niwa]

(In reply to akielbas from comment #7)
> Out of curiosity, when will this be changed again?
> 
> Would a better option perhaps have been to change it to 10.16 instead (which
> is what older Xcode versions did)? So that Big Sur can still be detected?

The long term goal is to limit the disclosure of the underlying macOS via user agent string and other means since it can be used for finger printing purposes.

[Eric Portis]

Cloudinary is struggling to implement a workaround for https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=219977 / rdar://problem/72485913, which affects MacOS ≥ 11.1. Is there any reliable way to detect platform version, currently?

[karl]

Brent, Maciej,

> The world apparently isn't ready for macOS 11.0 in User Agents. Because of the depressing UA sniffing code on the web, let's just report our current shipping release until things settle down.

Do you have examples of sites which were breaking because of the OS information in the UA string?

I'm trying to retrace the origin of it. 
https://www.otsukare.info/2021/02/15/capping-macos-user-agent

We (Mozilla) are likely to try to work together with Google Chrome team on understanding the webcompat space as we are in the process of making similar changes.

[Aodhan Cullen]

(In reply to Ryosuke Niwa from comment #8)
> (In reply to akielbas from comment #7)
> > Out of curiosity, when will this be changed again?
> > 
> > Would a better option perhaps have been to change it to 10.16 instead (which
> > is what older Xcode versions did)? So that Big Sur can still be detected?
> 
> The long term goal is to limit the disclosure of the underlying macOS via
> user agent string and other means since it can be used for finger printing
> purposes.

That doesn't really make sense, as you were happy to report is as macOS 11.0 - but only rolled it back when it broke some websites?

We can't report on Big Sur usage correctly for the world any more at

https://gs.statcounter.com/macos-version-market-share/desktop/worldwide

Could you reconsider changing it to 10.16?

[Jonathan Watt]

FWIW Mozilla made the same change in Firefox 87 to report 10.15 forever to reduce fingerprint surface[1] (backported to Firefox ESR 78). That was after initially adding various special cases to report 10.16 for specific sites for web compat[2].

1. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1679929
2. e.g. https://github.com/mozilla-extensions/webcompat-addon/pull/200

Safari (and all browsers) on my M1 MacBook running macOS Ventura still shows the useragent as "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/16.4 Safari/605.1.15"

[Dushan]

Hi Team,
Still we can see the issue even this issue is fixed. All the usages are being tracked to macOS 10.15 Safari.Would you be able to take look into this

[Ashley Gullen]

Could Apple implement the navigator.userAgentData API? (Issue 241749)

Having frozen the user agent string macOS version, there is now essentially no public information on macOS usage by version. Apple do not appear to publish any such stats themselves, leaving web stats the only source of information that software developers can make decisions on (like StatCounter global stats) - but this information is no longer reliable as UA strings are frozen. It is difficult to know which versions to target and the wrong decision could leave lots of macOS users unsupported.

The navigator.userAgentData API could provide just the bare minimum major OS version (e.g. 14.0, 15.0) which provides basic compatibility information with minimal fingerprinting impact. It also has the benefit of not needing websites to have to parse obscure user agent strings.

What does it mean "This is to preserve original OS version on older macOS."? Why? Is due to roman numerals and OS"X" = 10? No.
And who is Charles? As in "That was Charles's request." is it time to request Charles go bite a dick or he has legit privacy opsec? Why is it sensible to have a "long term goal is to limit the disclosure of the underlying macOS via user agent string and other means since it can be used for finger printing purposes." yeah so what? Finger printing has it's uses!! Run bloomin' TorBrowser on Tails if you wanna mess with your fingerprints!! This is not freaking Kali Linux its macOS right'? It's normies running Safari yeah?

@Eric seems to have legit issue:
Cloudinary is struggling to implement a workaround for https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=219977 / rdar://problem/72485913, which affects MacOS ≥ 11.1. Is there any reliable way to detect platform version, currently?

Also this perverse anti-feature attitude seems to be infecting Firefox / Chrome listen to @Karl
"We (Mozilla) are likely to try to work together with Google Chrome team on understanding the webcompat space as we are in the process of making similar changes." Why? What changes? Are you thinking of freezing OS version in Firefox. No. Wrong answer. 

@Ashley has a good sensible idea just to round it out. eg 14.0 etc "Having frozen the user agent string macOS version, there is now essentially no public information on macOS usage by version. Apple do not appear to publish any such stats themselves, leaving web stats the only source of information that software developers can make decisions on (like StatCounter global stats) - but this information is no longer reliable as UA strings are frozen. It is difficult to know which versions to target and the wrong decision could leave lots of macOS users unsupported.":

Fear of fingerprinting is a mind virus I am the vaccine. 

I'm writing an article titled "Dear Apple, please make a computer I would like to buy". I want headphones ports back, and also magsafe, ethernet, PCIe, Firewire, USB-A. I switched from Amiga to Mac so I could use Quicktime, then Firewire, now Logic Audio. Pirate version but I decided I will pay for copy of Logic Audio if I had a computer it would run on or if it runs on this awful Macbook 2015 - worst trackpad I ever used. Always plug a wired mouse in.  .

Due to their not even having an enthusiast model (eg M1 w/ 32GB RAM PCIe x2) any more (mac mini is not big box, many many RAM slots, room for HDD etc)

I really want to include a graph showing market share to rub it in Apple's face hopefully for a reaction (I want 3.5" headphone jacks back!!!). Apple will go bust if they fail to let me plug my high-end high-impedance headphones in.

But which idiot / privacy evangelist at Apple had the belligerent and insane idea to "let's just not report our current shipping release in browser stats". It's like somebody is trying to keep the worst aspects of Steve Jobbs personality alive, stop it! 

Desktop macOS Version Market Share Worldwide - September 2025
macOS Catalina <--- what? why? jesus wept. 
	59.64%
macOS 15.6
	6.98%  <-- are these numbers accurate? 
macOS S This is to preserve original OS version on older macOS.equoia
	6.09%
macOS Cheetah
	4.69%
macOS Sierra <-- I'm overjoyed to be able to use macOS 10.9 running Logic Audio 9 accessed over VNC
	2.07%
macOS Sonoma
	1.58%

Normally I use an AMD Linuxbox with over 200 gigaflops of CPU and KDE Plasma.

at https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/macos/desktop/worldwide they say:
Apple are incorrectly reporting all macOS releases since Catalina 10.15 as Catalina 10.15. You can read more about it here.
We can't correctly show usage for Catalina 10.15, Big Sur 11, Monterey 12, Ventura 13 or Sonoma 14 until Apple fixes this.

Dear Apple Article
It's going to be about all my recent frustrations that seemed to have started exactly when the fools began soldering CPU, RAM, and storage into the motherboards (2015?).* I was truly shocked when they removed headphones 3.5mm. It seems since Steve Jobbs died they feel it right to continue an artificial feeling belligerence and extreme forced obsolescence attitude. Like charging $700 USD for wheels on the box.

* I'm lucky I ran TimeMachine because the "life savings" $3k 2015 laptop eventually black-screened in 2021, taking all that soldered down storage with it. Still though at least I didnt loose my album recordings I could go back to my iMac 2009 with 3Ghz intel CPU and pull out the SSD I installed after it too eventually black-screened itself ~2022. So I pulled that SSD and install in a newer 2017 iMac, which had the screen glued down so I open with a razor and pizza cutter - accidentally bricking the screen in the process to recover my album project. It's over at bandcamp at tomachi.tv and funk.nz. 

** and am willing to die trying (Linux Firewire audio 'FADO' drivers are just now coming good for audio by the way, so Apple is nearly too late).