Fetching Webpages As A Mobile Browser Using Curl

You can fetch a webpage as if you’re requesting from a mobile device by setting curl’s User-Agent header to match a mobile browser. Remote servers use the User-Agent header to decide whether to serve mobile or desktop versions of pages.

Basic syntax

Use the -A (or --user-agent) flag to specify a mobile User-Agent string:

curl -A "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 18_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/18.1 Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1" https://example.com/

Current mobile User-Agent strings

Different devices and browsers require different User-Agent strings. These are current as of 2026:

iPhone (Safari)

curl -A "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 18_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/18.1 Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1" https://example.com/

Android Chrome

curl -A "Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 15) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/131.0.0.0 Mobile Safari/537.36" https://example.com/

Android Firefox

curl -A "Mozilla/5.0 (Android 15; Mobile; rv:135.0) Gecko/135.0 Firefox/135.0" https://example.com/

Samsung Galaxy (Chrome)

curl -A "Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 15; SM-G990B) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/131.0.0.0 Mobile Safari/537.36" https://example.com/

When in doubt, the Android Chrome string works for most sites that differentiate mobile content.

Building realistic mobile requests

Combine the User-Agent with other headers to mimic real mobile browser behavior:

curl -A "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 18_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15" \
  -H "Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.9" \
  -H "Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, br" \
  -H "Viewport-Width: 390" \
  -H "Sec-CH-UA-Mobile: ?1" \
  -L \
  https://example.com/

Flag reference:

-A — Sets the User-Agent string
-H — Add custom headers to match browser behavior
-L — Follow redirects (many sites redirect mobile traffic differently)
-i — Include response headers in output
-v — Verbose mode (shows headers, SSL handshake, timing)
-o <file> — Save output to file
-D <file> — Save cookies to file (for stateful requests)

Verify what the server received

Test endpoints confirm the User-Agent the server sees:

curl -A "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 18_1 like Mac OS X)" https://httpbin.org/user-agent

Returns JSON with the User-Agent string the server recorded. Useful for debugging if mobile content isn’t being served.

Save mobile pages to disk

curl -A "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 18_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15" \
  https://example.com/ -o mobile-page.html

Include response headers:

curl -A "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 18_1 like Mac OS X)" \
  -i https://example.com/ > mobile-response.txt

Handling cookies and sessions

Some sites require cookies for proper mobile detection:

curl -A "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 18_1 like Mac OS X)" \
  -c cookies.txt \
  -b cookies.txt \
  https://example.com/

The -c flag saves cookies; -b loads them for subsequent requests.

Common issues and solutions

User-Agent strings change frequently

Mobile OS versions and browser versions update multiple times per year. If a particular User-Agent stops working, check current strings at whatismybrowser.com or capture one from a real device using browser DevTools.

Servers validate beyond User-Agent

Some sites check additional mobile headers like Sec-CH-UA-Mobile, viewport dimensions, or connection type. Try adding:

curl -A "Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 15)" \
  -H "Sec-CH-UA-Mobile: ?1" \
  -H "Sec-Fetch-Dest: document" \
  -H "Sec-Fetch-Mode: navigate" \
  https://example.com/

JavaScript-rendered content

curl only fetches raw HTML. If a site renders mobile content via JavaScript, curl won’t see the rendered output. Use headless browsers instead:

# Using Playwright (Node.js)
npx playwright codegen --device "iPhone 12" https://example.com/

# Using Selenium (Python)
from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By

driver = webdriver.Chrome()
driver.set_window_size(390, 844)  # iPhone viewport
driver.get("https://example.com/")

Rate limiting and blocking

Aggressive scraping triggers rate limits and IP bans regardless of User-Agent. Respect robots.txt, add delays between requests, and rotate IPs if necessary:

curl -A "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 18_1 like Mac OS X)" \
  --max-time 10 \
  --retry 2 \
  --retry-delay 5 \
  https://example.com/

Certificate issues with old systems

On systems with outdated CA certificates, add --cacert or disable verification (for testing only):

curl -A "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 18_1 like Mac OS X)" \
  --cacert /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt \
  https://example.com/

Never disable SSL verification (-k) in production.

Fetching Webpages as a Mobile Browser Using curl