Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.
** Changed in: chromium-browser (Ubuntu)
Status: New => Confirmed
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1877073
Title:
Stop using custom user agent, work towards generic one
Status in chromium-browser package in Ubuntu:
Confirmed
Bug description:
Ubuntu's Chromium build uses a custom user agent in many ways. It
included "Ubuntu" in the .deb versions, and now it includes "snap" in
the snap versions. Also, it adds a "Chromium/<version>" field. This
breaks many websites that do aggressive user agent matching, such as
Netflix and Microsoft Teams.
(Yes, unfortunately I have to use the latter every now and then, and I
do not want to install the proprietary blob app for it.)
Chromium snap's current user agent is "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64)
AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) snap Chromium/81.0.4044.129
Chrome/81.0.4044.129 Safari/537.36"
While normal Chrome's current user agent is "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux
x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/81.0.4044.129
Safari/537.36"
Pretty much every incompatibility-related issue is solved by spoofing
the user agent and removing the "snap Chromium/81.0.4044.129" part,
simply claiming to be normal Chrome. There is not really any point in
differentiating between Chromium and Chrome, but it breaks many
websites, and it's also a nasty feature for browser fingerprinting.
Identifying as Chromium will only annoy users and have them install
the proprietary Chrome browser instead, so "Netflix works" and "they
can join their meeting".
In order to work around such issues, Vivaldi has already decided to
just use Chrome's user agent, because otherwise things broke for no
obvious reasons:
https://vivaldi.com/blog/user-agent-changes/
Moreover, Google has decided to semi-deprecate user agents altogether
in upcoming Chrome releases:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-to-phase-out-user-agent-strings-in-chrome/
https://9to5google.com/2020/01/14/google-deprecate-chrome-user-agent-string-privacy/
So with these upcoming changes in Chrome, can Chromium in Ubuntu
please follow suit, and no longer differentiate from whatever string
Google will use for Chrome?
$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
Release: 20.04
$ snap info chromium
name: chromium
summary: Chromium web browser, open-source version of Chrome
publisher: Canonical*
store-url: https://snapcraft.io/chromium
contact:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chromium-browser/+bugs?field.tag=snap
license: unset
description: |
An open-source browser project that aims to build a safer, faster, and more
stable way for all
Internet users to experience the web.
commands:
- chromium.chromedriver
- chromium
snap-id: XKEcBqPM06H1Z7zGOdG5fbICuf8NWK5R
tracking: latest/stable
refresh-date: 6 days ago, at 10:41 CEST
channels:
latest/stable: 81.0.4044.129 2020-04-29 (1135) 161MB -
latest/candidate: 81.0.4044.129 2020-04-28 (1135) 161MB -
latest/beta: 83.0.4103.23 2020-04-25 (1125) 163MB -
latest/edge: 84.0.4128.3 2020-04-29 (1136) 164MB -
installed: 81.0.4044.129 (1135) 161MB -
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