Desktop Browser 17+

The problem we run into on our mobile devices is that some companies, including some major ones, omit some features on the mobile version of their websites *unnecessarily*. So we end up having to trick these websites into giving us the desktop version when working on our phones and tablets, just in order to access certain features that we need.

Desktop Browser by Spicy Apps is a wonderful app in my opinion, on my iPhone anyway, especially since it's the only one in existence that uses both user agent *and* SCREEN SIZE to trick websites to give us their desktop versions on our mobile devices. There are a number of mobile browsers that allow you to get the desktop version of a website, but they all use user agent code to trick the website into believing they are running on a computer instead of a phone or tablet. Only Desktop Browser by Spicy Apps uses also screen size code to pretend it is running on a desktop or laptop computer with a big screen in order to get the desktop version of the website. Spoofing screen size is necessary these days because more and more websites are switching to using the screen size of the device requesting their webpage to determine whether to send the device the desktop or mobile version of the website. They are doing this because the industry is encouraging something called "responsive programming", providing the same experience for all users no matter their device. So you adapt the website's appearance--but NOT its function--depending upon the user's screen size.

Hey, to all you website developers out there: "responsive programming" means fully responsive--the SAME experience for all users no matter their device. In other words, you provide ALL features to all users, no matter what their device is! This is what I, as a small-time website developer as well, do. I don't know why, for example, big corporations like Yahoo, with their Yahoo!Mail, can't do the same.

The Desktop Browser app circumvents this deficiency by spoofing screen size--pretending that your phone or tablet has a big computer screen. Now, it does not work for every single website, but only because websites keep changing their internal code, as Spicy Apps told me recently when I inquired about Yahoo!Mail that wasn't displaying desktop mode for me. But most websites work in my experience, and I think this app developer works hard to make that so. In fact, even though the free version is just fine for me, I just paid the few dollars to upgrade, just to support him.

The free version of the app allows you to switch between desktop and mobile view of a website, create and use bookmarks, share the URL of the webpage you are currently looking at, and see your browsing history. When you're typing a website's URL into the browser's address box, the app also provides a few shortcuts for your convenience, like http://, https://, www., .com, .org, etc. In the app's Settings, you can change your homepage, clear cache & cookies, turn on Touch ID or Face ID, turn on a pop-up blocker, and report a problem to the developer.

The upgraded version of the app adds tabs, printing, changing your search engine, creating a PDF of the current webpage, and a few other things.

The only quibble I have with the free version, like others, is with the interface at the front to actually get into the browser itself every time. It's a bit of a pain, until at least you get used to it: there are 1, sometimes 3, quick extra taps to get into the browser itself. But once I got used to it, it's not a big enough quibble to drop me down from my 5 stars to 4 stars.

The first screen when you start up the app displays choices of going into the free app, trying the upgraded app Browse Plus (that you can use for free 10 times, which is actually convenient in order to check it out), bookmarks, history, and a button to take you to your three purchase choices: buy Browse Plus ($2.79), remove ads ($2.79), and both combined for $3.99 (I'm in Canada).

If you go into the free browser, when you first start up the app (or if your operating system has cleared the cache because it needed the memory when you switched to another running app on your device and then switched back to Desktop Browser), it posts a pop-up entitled "Help us to continue the development of this app" and then prompts you to choose, "sponsored ad", "remove ads ($2.79)", and "Back". Back just takes you back to the first screen and not into the browser of course. You have to tap "sponsored ad" in order to view the ad and then dismiss it to get into the browser itself. Calling it "sponsored ad" does not make it clear to the novice user. But I get it, like almost every free app out there, there are sponsored ads that we have to at least see as support for development and maintenance of the free app. But for me anyway, the sponsored ad I kept getting was all in Chinese, including the two buttons at the bottom of the ad, so it was confusing for me the first few times of what was happening and what I was supposed to do. I finally learned that one button takes me to the sponsor's website, and the other button dismisses the ad and puts me into the browser. Also, this is a little bit of an unusual way to support sponsored ads, as it really puts the ad in your face in a dialog box, as opposed to just displaying the ad at the top or bottom of the screen while using the browser. But perhaps at least an ad in my language might be better? But once I finally figured out what the heck was going on, and which button to tap, I got into the rhythm and all was well using this app.

This is a god send

App works ok. You cannot zoom or resize the screen and some websites cannot even be properly used. But be prepared for it to force you into watching a 30 sec ad every 2 dam minutes.