DeviceDetector.NET

DeviceDetector.NET is a universal device detection library for .NET that parses HTTP User-Agent strings (and optionally User-Agent Client Hints) to identify various entities. It is a faithful port of the PHP matomo-org/device-detector library, meaning it uses the same regex rule set.

It can detect:

• Devices: desktop, smartphone, tablet, phablet, TV, console, car browser, camera, portable media player, wearable, smart display, smart speaker, peripheral.
• Clients: browsers, feed readers, media players, mobile apps, PIMs, libraries.
• Operating systems: name, version, and family.
• Bots: crawlers, spiders, and monitoring tools.
• Brands and models: specific hardware/mobile device identifiers.

The DeviceDetector.NET.Icons.Common package provides shared icon-path-resolution primitives.

Important: This package is not intended to be referenced directly by application code. Instead, you should install one of the following packages depending on your requirements:

• DeviceDetector.NET.Icons (Simbiat's icon pack)
• DeviceDetector.NET.Icons.Matomo (Official Matomo icon pack)

DeviceDetector.NET provides detection capabilities for a wide range of operating systems and browsers. The detection lists are auto-generated and updated periodically.

Note: The lists provided in the documentation are subject to change and may not always be exhaustive. As of the last update on 2026/07/30, the library supports a vast array of platforms including major desktop OSs (Windows, Mac, Linux), mobile OSs (Android, iOS, HarmonyOS), and specialized embedded or gaming systems.

DeviceDetector.NET is capable of identifying a wide range of client information, including:

• Mobile Apps: A vast list of applications, including those built with AFNetworking or Electron.
• PIMs (Personal Information Managers): Email and productivity clients like Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, and Thunderbird.
• Feed Readers: RSS and podcast clients such as Reeder, NewsBlur, and NetNewsWire.
• Media Players: Various desktop and mobile audio/video players.
• Operating Systems and Browsers: (Refer to the full documentation for complete lists).

Note: The detection capabilities are extensive and cover various categories of software and hardware identifiers.

To optimize performance, the User-Agent is parsed at most once per request. The first time a log event is enriched during a request, the result is stored in HttpContext.Items. Subsequent log calls within the same request reuse this cached property.

Note: This process forces VersionTruncation.VERSION_TRUNCATION_NONE, meaning logs will always contain full version numbers regardless of your global DeviceDetector.SetVersionTruncation settings.

When an HTTP request is being handled, every log event will include a DeviceDetector property. This property contains parsed information including:

• Device
• Client
• Operating System
• Brand
• Model

Note: If there is no active HttpContext (such as during application startup or within a background service), the enricher performs no action (no-op).

Device detection performance can be managed at two levels:

1. Fragment Caching (Default): Creating a new DeviceDetector instance per request is lightweight and efficient. The library automatically uses a process-wide fragment cache for regex results. No extra configuration is required for this to work.
2. Instance Caching (High Load): If parsing becomes a bottleneck under heavy load, you can use LRUCachedDeviceDetector.GetDeviceDetector(userAgent).

Warning: Using the LRU cache approach does not support Client Hints. Only use this if you do not require Client Hint data for your specific detection needs.

Decide how to integrate device detection based on your use case:

• For Logging: Use the Serilog.Enrichers.AspNetCore.DeviceDetector package if you want device information (like OS or Browser) to be automatically attached to every log entry (errors, warnings, etc.) for a request.
• For Application Logic: Use DeviceDetector.GetInfoFromUserAgent or the Dependency Injection wrapper pattern if you need to change application behavior based on the device (e.g., serving different HTML/CSS for mobile users).

DeviceDetector.NET abstracts regex matching behind the IRegexEngine interface. By default, the library uses MSRegexCompiledEngine, which is backed by .NET's System.Text.RegularExpressions.

You can swap the engine using DeviceDetector.SetRegexEngine(IRegexEngine) or by calling SetRegexEngine on individual parsers (AbstractParser). If no engine is explicitly set, GetRegexEngine() will lazily default to MSRegexCompiledEngine.

// Example of setting a specific engine
var dd = new DeviceDetector(userAgent, clientHints);
dd.SetRegexEngine(new PcreRegexEngine());
dd.Parse();

DeviceDetector.NET is a comprehensive library capable of identifying a wide range of hardware and software attributes from client identifiers (like User-Agent strings). It can detect:

• Operating Systems: Various desktop, mobile, and embedded OS versions.
• Browsers: A vast list of web browsers and their specific versions.
• Device Brands: Hundreds of manufacturers (e.g., Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi, Sony, etc.).
• Device Models: Specific hardware models associated with brands.
• Device Types: Classification of devices (e.g., mobile, tablet, desktop, smart TV, console).
• Other metadata: Additional device-related information provided by the detection engine.