Devices And Browsers

The Devices & Browsers report tells you how your visitors are accessing your site — what hardware they are using, which browser they are running, what operating system powers their device, and roughly what screen size they have. This information is essential for making informed decisions about your site's design, compatibility, and performance priorities.

Device types

Statalog classifies every visit into one of three device categories:

  • Desktop — traditional computers and laptops
  • Mobile — smartphones
  • Tablet — tablets and large-screen handheld devices

For most websites, the desktop/mobile split is the most immediately actionable piece of data. If 70% of your visitors are on mobile and your site is not optimised for small screens, you have a clear problem. If 90% of your visitors are on desktop — as is common for developer tools, B2B software, and technical documentation — investing heavily in mobile-specific features may not be the best use of time.

Browsers

The browser breakdown shows which rendering engines and browser products your visitors use, including:

  • Chrome (and Chromium-based browsers: Edge, Brave, Arc, Opera, Samsung Internet)
  • Safari
  • Firefox
  • Edge (reported separately from Chrome in the UA string)
  • Others

Browser data informs compatibility decisions. If Safari represents 30% of your audience, bugs that affect WebKit need to be treated as high priority. If Firefox is at 2%, you may choose to prioritise fixes for other browsers first. The browser report also surfaces unusual browsers that can indicate bot traffic or automated testing if they appear in unexpected volumes.

Operating systems

Operating system data provides a layer of context that device type alone does not capture:

  • Windows (various versions)
  • macOS
  • iOS (iPhones and iPads)
  • Android (phones and tablets)
  • Linux (often correlated with developer audiences)
  • ChromeOS

The OS breakdown is particularly useful for understanding your audience's technical profile. A site where Linux accounts for 15% of traffic has a very different audience than one where it is 0.5%. Seeing a high share of iOS versus Android can inform decisions about progressive web app features and mobile browser compatibility, since iOS forces all browsers to use WebKit.

Screen size buckets

Statalog captures the viewport width of each visitor's browser window and groups it into size buckets. These buckets correspond to common responsive design breakpoints:

  • Extra small — up to 575px (small phones in portrait)
  • Small — 576px to 767px (larger phones)
  • Medium — 768px to 991px (tablets, phones in landscape)
  • Large — 992px to 1199px (small laptops, tablets in landscape)
  • Extra large — 1200px and above (desktops and large laptops)

Screen size data lets you validate your responsive design decisions with real visitor data. If you are debating whether to invest in a specific breakpoint optimisation, knowing that 40% of your visitors are viewing at exactly that width makes the decision straightforward.

How User-Agent parsing works

All of the above data — device type, browser, OS — is derived from the User-Agent string that browsers send with every HTTP request. Statalog parses this string server-side at the time of each pageview to extract the relevant attributes.

The User-Agent string is processed but not stored in its raw form. Only the extracted attributes (device type, browser name, browser version, OS name) are stored. This means you get the device intelligence without retaining a string that, in combination with other data points, could contribute to fingerprinting.

Why this matters for responsive design

Looking at your actual visitor device data before making design decisions prevents two common mistakes:

  1. Over-investing in a minority use case — Building a complex mobile experience when 95% of your traffic is desktop.
  2. Under-investing in a majority use case — Neglecting mobile performance when more than half your visitors are on phones.

The Devices report also helps prioritise bug fixes. A rendering issue that affects only a specific browser or OS version can be triaged appropriately once you know what percentage of your visitors would be affected.

Comparison with GA4

Google Analytics 4 provides similar device, browser, and OS data. The difference is in how the data is collected: GA4 uses cookies and session identifiers to track this data over time, requiring a consent banner in most jurisdictions under GDPR. Statalog collects and reports the same categories of device data without cookies, without fingerprinting, and without requiring any user consent mechanism on your site.

FAQ

Why does Chrome have such a high share? Chrome and Chromium-based browsers (Edge, Brave, Samsung Internet, Opera, Arc) collectively dominate global browser market share. Seeing Chrome at 60–70% is typical for most websites. The "Chrome" figure in Statalog includes only Google Chrome; Chromium-based alternatives are reported separately under their own names where the UA string distinguishes them.

Can I filter the dashboard by device type? Yes. Clicking any row in the device, browser, or OS tables applies it as a filter across the entire dashboard, scoping all other reports to that specific segment. This lets you ask questions like "What pages do my mobile visitors view?" or "What is the bounce rate for Safari users?"

Does screen size reflect the monitor size or the browser window? Screen size reflects the browser viewport width — the width of the browser window in which your page is rendered, not the physical screen resolution. A visitor on a 1440p monitor with their browser windowed to half the screen will be recorded with a viewport around 720px, not 1440px. This is more useful for responsive design purposes than raw screen resolution.