There are a whole bunch of reasons you may want to trick a web site into thinking you’re using a browser other than Firefox. Maybe you’re a web developer and need to see what a site looks like in another browser. Maybe a site only allows certain browsers and you don’t have access to them. Whatever your reason, this guide will show you how to use the User-Agent Switcher and Manager add-on for Firefox so that you change the user-agent that Firefox uses to identify itself to a different one.
- Head over to the User-Agent Switcher and Manager add-on page and install it as you would any other Firefox add-on. Once it’s installed you’ll see a new icon in the upper-right corner of Firefox.
- When you click the User-Agent Switcher and Manager icon a large window will pop-up.
- To change the User-Agent for Firefox, start by clicking the Browser menu from the upper-left corner of the User-Agent Switcher and Manager pop-up window. From that list, choose the browser you whose user-agent you want to use. In this example, I’m choosing Safari.
- Next, click the Operating System menu (it’s right next to the Browser menu). I’ve opted to use iOS.
- Now select the version of the browser you want to use.
- If you only want the current window (or tab) to use the alternate user-agent, click the Window button. If you want to use the new user-agent across all windows and tabs, click the Apply button.
- The User-Agent Switcher and Manager icon will change, indicating the new user-agent that your current window/tab is using.
- Click the Refresh Tab button to reload the page you’re currently viewing. This will send the ‘new’ user-agent to the web site and it will load as if you’re using that browser.
- As you can see in the screenshot below, YouTube now thinks my browser is Safari for iOS (iPhone/iPad) and it has loaded the mobile version of YouTube.com.
- When you’re done and want to switch back to the default Firefox user-agent, re-open the User-Agent Switcher and Manager pop-up window and click the Restart tab if you selected Window back in step #6. If you selected Apply so that the new user-agent was applied to all of your tabs and windows, instead of clicking Restart, click the Reset button.
- That’s it! You can now use Firefox to ‘trick’ web sites into thinking you’re using a browser that you’re not actually using.
For more Firefox tips and tricks, be sure to scroll through the Firefox category.
