User Agent change to being "Waterfox" breaking websites

[StinVec]

The recent change to Waterfox where it now reports as being "Waterfox" instead of "Firefox" is causing several websites I frequent (including web email) to no longer function as the browser is now an "unsupported" browser. I need to downgrade back to 56.2.1 or try to get myself to use "Firefox" just to be able to check my web email.

Please offer an option in the "Options" screen to manually change the user agent reporting back to what it was previously ("Firefox") instead of reporting as "Waterfox", or, if possible, configure the "Waterfox" user agent reporting to be accepted by sites that do not recognize Waterfox as being a "supported" browser.

Windows 7 64-bit
Waterfox 56.2.3

[pirate486743186]

You already can change it. It's a bit scarier then a nice menu though.

In the url bar, type "about:config" and enter
a scary page will appear.
in the search box of the page,
copy paste "general.useragent.override"
You modify that, with a string that works.

[StinVec]

You already can change it. It's a bit scarier then a nice menu though.

In the url bar, type "about:config" and enter
a scary page will appear.
in the search box of the page,
copy paste "general.useragent.override"
You modify that, with a string that works.

Thank you for this information. I am glad to know that it is able to be manually altered to undo this change. I will attempt to revert it to the previous user agent string. Hopefully my change will not be overwritten every time I update Waterfox. If it will be, this being an option in the GUI (whose setting persists across updates) would still be something I would personally desire.

Thank you again.

[pirate486743186]

Normally, it will just be the default, nothing to revert. Try this, without the quotes, as an override:
"Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:62.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/62.0"

In the future you'll eventually need to update it manually.

[grahamperrin]

https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/9drjqx/user_agent/e66gcir/ ▶ User Agent Overrider

There are other extensions, but that's the one that I use for general.useragent.override.

Elsewhere in that User agent post you have examples of service-specific strings.

---

NB 62.0 is outdated. 63.0 is current.

[grahamperrin]

… Please offer an option …

Extensions serve this purpose.

if possible, configure the "Waterfox" user agent reporting to be accepted by sites that do not recognize Waterfox as being a "supported" browser.

It'll be useful to get a string working in the context of browser-update/browser-update#416 (comment)

Postscript: resolved.

[Telmesomething]

Seeing image shown in the screenhsot when I login to Github (courtesy of Microsoft I guess).

Also had to install User Agent Overrider grahamperrin recommended to even post the screenshot (thanks for the tip graham).

[rdebath]

I've tried User-Agent Switcher from that same thread. It also works nicely to recover the hating on Waterfox that MS seem to have injected. Interestingly, the user agent does NOT have to be one of those mentioned, Wget works nicely.

[grahamperrin]

Spun off from https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/aeu9iu/-/edticf9/

… may have to revert back to a generic UA …

FWIW this non-generic string, which includes Waterfox, is also good for https://chemguide.co.uk/:

• Mozilla/5.0 (X11; FreeBSD amd64; rv:56.2) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/56.2 Waterfox/56.2

Taken from #178 (comment) but NB I haven't tested the string with other sites recently.

[grahamperrin]

Waterfox 56.2.3

@StinVec please test recently released 56.2.7.1. With the new style UA string (without overrides).

Better for you?

Feedback re: YouTube might be particularly helpful.

Please advise – thanks.

Related

User Agent: waterfox ▶ Waterfox 56.2.7.1 default UA strings

YouTube not rendering pages correctly : waterfox

[grahamperrin]

@StinVec please, have you tested?

Retrospective (56.2.3)

8e978a6#diff-a633a6dfcf161bf7cb9d3d9cdcdc2faeR439

For what it's worth, that approach (Waterfox somewhere in parentheses) seemed to not allow recognition of the version of Waterfox the browser in some situations.

WhatIsMyBrowser.com, for example:

• https://developers.whatismybrowser.com/useragents/explore/software_name/waterfox/?order_by=software_version
• https://developers.whatismybrowser.com/useragents/explore/software_name/waterfox/?order_by=-software_version (reverse sort)

[grahamperrin]

@MrAlex94 close this now, I reckon.

[gallonmate]

I think I'm having the useragent issue with version 2019.10 for https://answers.unrealengine.com

[grahamperrin]

@gallonmate thanks, an override has been requested. Discussion:

• https://www.reddit.com/comments/d79h2l/-/f6c2y84/

[Megalomaniak]

Use a spoofer such as User Agent Switcher. Waterfox should not lie about what it is. And thank god it is not firefox. Blam that piece of-