JavaScript identify Android WebView

Hello,

Recently I was working on the cordova project where we have mobile web application hosted on server. With the same URL loaded in Android webview we created native app. Now we have some functionalities in app that should only be available if URL is loaded in Android WebView like camera capture. For that we have to identify webview with JavaScript. In this blog I will explain how to do this.

I added very simple logic. I set custom user agent for WebView from Native android app and just checked that in JavaScript and set global variable. Here is how you can do that.

First of all open res/values/string.xml and add following line.

<string name="user_agent_suffix">AppName/1.0</string>

Then we this Custom Agent from onCreate function of Android Activity.

this.appView.getSettings().setUserAgentString(

            this.appView.getSettings().getUserAgentString() 

            + " "

            + getString(R.string.user_agent_suffix)

         );

So we are setting custom user agent in Android WebView. Now in our app we just have to check this with UserAgent.

Var isNativeApp  = /AppName\/[0-9\.]+$/.test(navigator.userAgent) ? true : false//For checking native app.

That's it now you can check isNativeApp variable anywhere in app to set functions on if the app is running in Android WebView.