Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

Getting mobile versions of some sites instead of desktop

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 136 views
  • Last reply by Owen5819

Owen5819
Owen5819
more options

Several days ago, Firefox started giving me what seem to be mobile versions of some sites instead of the desktop layouts I want. Ars Technica offers a way to switch to the full-site view. Slashdot does not. (It's URL comes up as m.slashdot.org even when I type in slashdot.org the hard way.) The problem does not affect all sites, but it does mess up several I look at daily. I did not deliberately change my preferences or otherwise alter Firefox.

I have tried bringing Firefox up in safe mode and even removing it and downloading it again. No change.

Help would be much appreciated. I like Firefox much better than the alternatives, but if this doesn't get fixed I will have to give up on it.

Many thanks.

Several days ago, Firefox started giving me what seem to be mobile versions of some sites instead of the desktop layouts I want. Ars Technica offers a way to switch to the full-site view. Slashdot does not. (It's URL comes up as m.slashdot.org even when I type in slashdot.org the hard way.) The problem does not affect all sites, but it does mess up several I look at daily. I did not deliberately change my preferences or otherwise alter Firefox. I have tried bringing Firefox up in safe mode and even removing it and downloading it again. No change. Help would be much appreciated. I like Firefox much better than the alternatives, but if this doesn't get fixed I will have to give up on it. Many thanks.

Chosen solution

Hi Owen5819, I'm not aware of a change to Firefox related to this. I know that some sites use a "responsive" layout that may flip to mobile when you zoom in (i.e., the available pixels are reduced). However, redirecting to a completely different site would more likely be based on your "user agent" string, which is a standard ID that browsers send to websites with each request.

The forum recorded your user agent string as:

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 8_3 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/600.1.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) FxiOS/1.0 Mobile/12F69 Safari/600.1.4

If you actually posted with a desktop version of Firefox, that could be your problem. If it's due to an internal setting, this article will help with clearing it: How to reset the default user agent on Firefox.

If it is due to an add-on, you'll need to check that by reviewing your extensions.

If you can't track it down, we might have more suggestions.

Was that the issue?

Read this answer in context 👍 0

All Replies (2)

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

Chosen Solution

Hi Owen5819, I'm not aware of a change to Firefox related to this. I know that some sites use a "responsive" layout that may flip to mobile when you zoom in (i.e., the available pixels are reduced). However, redirecting to a completely different site would more likely be based on your "user agent" string, which is a standard ID that browsers send to websites with each request.

The forum recorded your user agent string as:

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 8_3 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/600.1.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) FxiOS/1.0 Mobile/12F69 Safari/600.1.4

If you actually posted with a desktop version of Firefox, that could be your problem. If it's due to an internal setting, this article will help with clearing it: How to reset the default user agent on Firefox.

If it is due to an add-on, you'll need to check that by reviewing your extensions.

If you can't track it down, we might have more suggestions.

Was that the issue?

Owen5819
Owen5819 Question owner
more options

Not sure yet, but that certainly sounds right. Many thanks.