Game console user agents

Three platforms, three engines

Consoles are unusually easy to identify — each ships a clearly branded token — but they run very different engines underneath.

PlayStation 5:  Mozilla/5.0 (PlayStation; PlayStation 5/9.60) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/16.0 Safari/605.1.15
Xbox Series X:  Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; Xbox; Xbox Series X) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/131.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 Edg/131.0.0.0
Switch:         Mozilla/5.0 (Nintendo Switch; WifiWebAuthApplet) AppleWebKit/609.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) NF/6.0.2.22.6 NintendoBrowser/5.1.0.23519

PlayStation runs WebKit and reports a Safari version, so it behaves broadly like Safari of the same vintage. Xbox runs the Windows shell and reports a full Windows platform block plus an Edg token — a naive parser will classify an Xbox as a Windows desktop, which is why the Xbox token has to be checked before the platform block. Nintendo uses its own NetFront-derived browser.

The Switch has no general browser

Nintendo never shipped a standalone browser on the Switch. The WifiWebAuthApplet in the string is the captive-portal handler that appears when joining a hotel or airport network, and ShareApplet is the social-sharing view. Both are real, both appear in server logs, and neither can be navigated to arbitrary URLs by the user — so Switch traffic to a general website is far rarer than the install base would suggest.

Steam Deck

The Steam Deck runs SteamOS, an Arch Linux derivative, and its browser is desktop Chrome. Strings from the Steam client's built-in overlay carry Valve Steam GameOverlay; the desktop-mode browser sends an ordinary Linux Chrome string with no console marker at all.

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