You can do lot of interesting things on the web if you know how to modify the user-agent string of a web browser. For instance, change the Chrome user-agent string to that of iPhone Safari and you’ll be to read popular magazines for free.
Or change the user-agent to Googlebot and you get to read Wall St. Journal stories without subscribing. Or use the user-agent of Opera Mini phone browser and see mobile versions of web pages even on the desktop.
While it is relatively easy to edit the User-Agent string of Firefox, IE, Flock or Apple Safari through add-ons and registry hacks but you don’t have that luxury in Chrome since Google’s browser doesn’t support external add-ons yet.
iPhone version of Zinio Magazines in Google Chrome
It is however possible to change the user-agent of Google Chrome via the following hack - open Chrome.dll file inside a Hex viewer, search for the Chrome User Agent string and overwrite (not insert) that with the user-agent of another browser. Thanks Ramzalot.
Here are the full steps involved:
0. Make a backup of chrome.dll file - the file is available in the 0.2.xx folder of your Chrome installation folder (refer to #2).
1. Open chrome.dll inside Xvi32 and search for a patten that matches the default user agent string for Google Chrome :
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/0.X.Y.Z Safari/525.13.
2. Point the cursor to the letter M and choose Edit -> Overwrite String. Paste the user-agent of any other browser here. For instance, the strings for iPhone and Google spiders are:
Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A543 Safari/419.3
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)
3. Close Google Chrome (if running) and then save the chrome.dll file inside the hex editor. Restart chrome.exe and type about: in the address bar to confirm if the user agent has changed. If you have trouble opening chrome after making the above changes, just delete the modified chrome.dll file and replace it with the old backup.
iPhone mobile version of Google Reader in Google Chrome
As an example, I change the user agent of Google Chrome to iPhone and that is the reason why Google opening the iPhone optimized version of Google Reader even inside Chrome.
If you plan to use this trick more frequently, a better option is that you create multiple copies of chrome.dll - one per user agent. Now if you want Chrome to emulate IE or Firefox, just make rename the chrome-firefox.dll or chrome-iphone.dll to chrome.dll.
Related: Add Google Mobile Sites to Firefox Sidebar
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/software/change-google-chrome-user-agent-string/4566/
web: http://www.labnol.org/ email: amit@labnol.org
Reader Comments
Why in the world would you go to so much trouble to just emulate other apps in Chrome? Why not just do this in Firefox/Opera easily…
This makes no sense.
Written by Jeff on 09.16.08
if you dont want to mess with hex
try a program like proxomitron
Written by reed on 09.18.08
Google Chrome TOS allows editing the binary?
Written by Benedict Herold on 09.22.08
actuly chrome not able to open one of my server home page it
shows the message “Only IE5.0 and above supported” its good in feature and according to functionalty this one is the biggest disadvantage plzzzzz help me its urgent
Written by vikas on 09.27.08
Opera allows you to change the string in opera:config
but you can only choose from a small list. Firefox has an addon that lets you change it to whatever you want. There is a program that automates the above hack for opera here:
link
Written by Lou on 09.30.08
This has changed in the latest beta version of Google Chrome (I’m running 0.3.154.9). Use the –user-agent switch at the command line. The easiest way is to duplicate the shortcut in your Start Menu, right-click the copy, click properties, and in the “Target:” field, append ‘–user-agent=””‘ (w/o the ”) at the end, rename your icon, and voila. For example, mine is:
“C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe” –user-agent=”Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)”
I have to do this because my company only allows IE6 to access the proxy. Anyway, enjoy.
Written by Leo on 11.07.08
Thank you Leo, this tip workes for me !
Written by Makedjakila on 01.08.09
[Quoting Lou] “This has changed in the latest beta version of Google Chrome (I’m running 0.3.154.9). Use the –user-agent switch at the command line….”
Thanks Lou! This is a BIG help!!!!
Written by Josh on 02.04.09