What's the best way to detect a 'touch screen' device using JavaScript?

Question

I've written a jQuery plug-in that's for use on both desktop and mobile devices. I wondered if there is a way with JavaScript to detect if the device has touch screen capability. I'm using jquery-mobile.js to detect the touch screen events and it works on iOS, Android etc., but I'd also like to write conditional statements based on whether the user's device has a touch screen.

Is that possible?

Answer 1

UPDATE 2021

To see the old answers: check the history. I decided to start on a clean slate as it was getting out of hands when keeping the history in the post.

My original answer said that it could be a good idea to use the same function as Modernizr was using, but that is not valid anymore as they removed the "touchevents" tests on this PR: https://github.com/Modernizr/Modernizr/pull/2432 due to it being a confusing subject.

With that said this should be a fairly ok way of detecting if the browser has "touch capabilities":

function isTouchDevice() {
  return (('ontouchstart' in window) ||
     (navigator.maxTouchPoints > 0) ||
     (navigator.msMaxTouchPoints > 0));
}

But for more advanced use cases far more smarter persons than me have written about this subject, I would recommend reading those articles:

• Stu Cox: You Can't Detect a Touchscreen
• Detecting touch: it's the 'why', not the 'how'
• Getting touchy presentation by Patrick H. Lauke

Answer 2

Update: Please read blmstr's answer below before pulling a whole feature detection library into your project. Detecting actual touch support is more complex, and Modernizr only covers a basic use case.

Modernizr is a great, lightweight way to do all kinds of feature detection on any site.

It simply adds classes to the html element for each feature.

You can then target those features easily in CSS and JS. For example:

html.touch div {
    width: 480px;
}

html.no-touch div {
    width: auto;
}

And Javascript (jQuery example):

$('html.touch #popup').hide();

Answer 3

As Modernizr doesn't detect IE10 on Windows Phone 8/WinRT, a simple, cross-browser solution is:

var supportsTouch = 'ontouchstart' in window || navigator.msMaxTouchPoints;

You only ever need to check once as the device won't suddenly support or not support touch, so just store it in a variable so you can use it multiple times more efficiently.

Answer 4

Since the introduction of interaction media features you simply can do:

if(window.matchMedia("(pointer: coarse)").matches) {
    // touchscreen
}

https://www.w3.org/TR/mediaqueries-4/#descdef-media-any-pointer

Update (due to comments): The above solution is to detect if a "coarse pointer" - usually a touch screen - is the primary input device. In case you want to dectect if a device with e.g. a mouse also has a touch screen you may use any-pointer: coarse instead.

For more information have a look here: Detecting that the browser has no mouse and is touch-only

Answer 5

Using all the comments above I've assembled the following code that is working for my needs:

var isTouch = (('ontouchstart' in window) || (navigator.msMaxTouchPoints > 0));

I have tested this on iPad, Android (Browser and Chrome), Blackberry Playbook, iPhone 4s, Windows Phone 8, IE 10, IE 8, IE 10 (Windows 8 with Touchscreen), Opera, Chrome and Firefox.

It currently fails on Windows Phone 7 and I haven't been able to find a solution for that browser yet.

Hope someone finds this useful.

Answer 6

I like this one:

function isTouchDevice(){
    return window.ontouchstart !== undefined;
}

alert(isTouchDevice());

Answer 7

If you use Modernizr, it is very easy to use Modernizr.touch as mentioned earlier.

However, I prefer using a combination of Modernizr.touch and user agent testing, just to be safe.

var deviceAgent = navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase();

var isTouchDevice = Modernizr.touch || 
(deviceAgent.match(/(iphone|ipod|ipad)/) ||
deviceAgent.match(/(android)/)  || 
deviceAgent.match(/(iemobile)/) || 
deviceAgent.match(/iphone/i) || 
deviceAgent.match(/ipad/i) || 
deviceAgent.match(/ipod/i) || 
deviceAgent.match(/blackberry/i) || 
deviceAgent.match(/bada/i));

if (isTouchDevice) {
        //Do something touchy
    } else {
        //Can't touch this
    }

If you don't use Modernizr, you can simply replace the Modernizr.touch function above with ('ontouchstart' in document.documentElement)

Also note that testing the user agent iemobile will give you broader range of detected Microsoft mobile devices than Windows Phone.

Also see this SO question

Answer 8

We tried the modernizr implementation, but detecting the touch events is not consistent anymore (IE 10 has touch events on windows desktop, IE 11 works, because the've dropped touch events and added pointer api).

So we decided to optimize the website as a touch site as long as we don't know what input type the user has. This is more reliable than any other solution.

Our researches say, that most desktop users move with their mouse over the screen before they click, so we can detect them and change the behaviour before they are able to click or hover anything.

This is a simplified version of our code:

var isTouch = true;
window.addEventListener('mousemove', function mouseMoveDetector() {
    isTouch = false;
    window.removeEventListener('mousemove', mouseMoveDetector);
});

Answer 9

There is something better than checking if they have a touchScreen, is to check if they are using it, plus that's easier to check.

if (window.addEventListener) {
    var once = false;
    window.addEventListener('touchstart', function(){
        if (!once) {
            once = true;
            // Do what you need for touch-screens only
        }
    });
}

Answer 10

Working Fiddle

I have achieved it like this;

function isTouchDevice(){
    return true == ("ontouchstart" in window || window.DocumentTouch && document instanceof DocumentTouch);
}

if(isTouchDevice()===true) {
    alert('Touch Device'); //your logic for touch device
}
else {
    alert('Not a Touch Device'); //your logic for non touch device
}

Answer 11

This one works well even in Windows Surface tablets !!!

function detectTouchSupport {
msGesture = window.navigator && window.navigator.msPointerEnabled && window.MSGesture,
touchSupport = (( "ontouchstart" in window ) || msGesture || window.DocumentTouch &&     document instanceof DocumentTouch);
if(touchSupport) {
    $("html").addClass("ci_touch");
}
else {
    $("html").addClass("ci_no_touch");
}
}

Answer 12

The biggest "gotcha" with trying to detect touch is on hybrid devices that support both touch and the trackpad/mouse. Even if you're able to correctly detect whether the user's device supports touch, what you really need to do is detect what input device the user is currently using. There's a detailed write up of this challenge and a possible solution here.

Basically the approach to figuring out whether a user just touched the screen or used a mouse/ trackpad instead is to register both a touchstart and mouseover event on the page:

document.addEventListener('touchstart', functionref, false) // on user tap, "touchstart" fires first
document.addEventListener('mouseover', functionref, false) // followed by mouse event, ie: "mouseover"

A touch action will trigger both of these events, though the former (touchstart) always first on most devices. So counting on this predictable sequence of events, you can create a mechanism that dynamically adds or removes a can-touch class to the document root to reflect the current input type of the user at this moment on the document:

;(function(){
    var isTouch = false //var to indicate current input type (is touch versus no touch) 
    var isTouchTimer 
    var curRootClass = '' //var indicating current document root class ("can-touch" or "")
     
    function addtouchclass(e){
        clearTimeout(isTouchTimer)
        isTouch = true
        if (curRootClass != 'can-touch'){ //add "can-touch' class if it's not already present
            curRootClass = 'can-touch'
            document.documentElement.classList.add(curRootClass)
        }
        isTouchTimer = setTimeout(function(){isTouch = false}, 500) //maintain "istouch" state for 500ms so removetouchclass doesn't get fired immediately following a touch event
    }
     
    function removetouchclass(e){
        if (!isTouch && curRootClass == 'can-touch'){ //remove 'can-touch' class if not triggered by a touch event and class is present
            isTouch = false
            curRootClass = ''
            document.documentElement.classList.remove('can-touch')
        }
    }
     
    document.addEventListener('touchstart', addtouchclass, false) //this event only gets called when input type is touch
    document.addEventListener('mouseover', removetouchclass, false) //this event gets called when input type is everything from touch to mouse/ trackpad
})();

More details here.

Answer 13

I used pieces of the code above to detect whether touch, so my fancybox iframes would show up on desktop computers and not on touch. I noticed that Opera Mini for Android 4.0 was still registering as a non-touch device when using blmstr's code alone. (Does anyone know why?)

I ended up using:

<script>
$(document).ready(function() {
    var ua = navigator.userAgent;
    function is_touch_device() { 
        try {  
            document.createEvent("TouchEvent");  
            return true;  
        } catch (e) {  
            return false;  
        }  
    }

    if ((is_touch_device()) || ua.match(/(iPhone|iPod|iPad)/) 
    || ua.match(/BlackBerry/) || ua.match(/Android/)) {
        // Touch browser
    } else {
        // Lightbox code
    }
});
</script>

Answer 14

Actually, I researched this question and consider all situations. because it is a big issue on my project too. So I reach the below function, it works for all versions of all browsers on all devices:

const isTouchDevice = () => {
  const prefixes = ['', '-webkit-', '-moz-', '-o-', '-ms-', ''];
  const mq = query => window.matchMedia(query).matches;

  if (
    'ontouchstart' in window ||
    (window.DocumentTouch && document instanceof DocumentTouch)
  ) {
    return true;
  }
  return mq(['(', prefixes.join('touch-enabled),('), 'heartz', ')'].join(''));
};

Hint: Definitely, the isTouchDevice just returns boolean values.

Answer 15

Check out this post, it gives a really nice code snippet for what to do when touch devices are detected or what to do if touchstart event is called:

$(function(){
  if(window.Touch) {
    touch_detect.auto_detected();
  } else {
    document.ontouchstart = touch_detect.surface;
  }
}); // End loaded jQuery
var touch_detect = {
  auto_detected: function(event){
    /* add everything you want to do onLoad here (eg. activating hover controls) */
    alert('this was auto detected');
    activateTouchArea();
  },
  surface: function(event){
    /* add everything you want to do ontouchstart here (eg. drag & drop) - you can fire this in both places */
    alert('this was detected by touching');
    activateTouchArea();
  }
}; // touch_detect
function activateTouchArea(){
  /* make sure our screen doesn't scroll when we move the "touchable area" */
  var element = document.getElementById('element_id');
  element.addEventListener("touchstart", touchStart, false);
}
function touchStart(event) {
  /* modularize preventing the default behavior so we can use it again */
  event.preventDefault();
}

Answer 16

I would avoid using screen width to determine if a device is a touch device. There are touch screens much larger than 699px, think of Windows 8. Navigatior.userAgent may be nice to override false postives.

I would recommend checking out this issue on Modernizr.

Are you wanting to test if the device supports touch events or is a touch device. Unfortunately, that's not the same thing.

Answer 17

No, it's not possible. The excellent answers given are only ever partial, because any given method will produce false positives and false negatives. Even the browser doesn't always know if a touchscreen is present, due to OS APIs, and the fact can change during a browser session, particularly with KVM-type arrangements.

See further details in this excellent article:

http://www.stucox.com/blog/you-cant-detect-a-touchscreen/

The article suggests you reconsider the assumptions that make you want to detect touchscreens, they're probably wrong. (I checked my own for my app, and my assumptions were indeed wrong!)

The article concludes:

For layouts, assume everyone has a touchscreen. Mouse users can use large UI controls much more easily than touch users can use small ones. The same goes for hover states.

For events and interactions, assume anyone may have a touchscreen. Implement keyboard, mouse and touch interactions alongside each other, ensuring none block each other.

Answer 18

Many of these work but either require jQuery, or javascript linters complain about the syntax. Considering your initial question asks for a "JavaScript" (not jQuery, not Modernizr) way of solving this, here's a simple function that works every time. It's also about as minimal as you can get.

function isTouchDevice() {
    return !!window.ontouchstart;
}

console.log(isTouchDevice());

One last benefit I'll mention is that this code is framework and device agnostic. Enjoy!

Answer 19

It looks like Chrome 24 now support touch events, probably for Windows 8. So the code posted here no longer works. Instead of trying to detect if touch is supported by the browser, I'm now binding both touch and click events and making sure only one is called:

myCustomBind = function(controlName, callback) {

  $(controlName).bind('touchend click', function(e) {
    e.stopPropagation();
    e.preventDefault();

    callback.call();
  });
};

And then calling it:

myCustomBind('#mnuRealtime', function () { ... });

Hope this helps !

Answer 20

All browser supported except Firefox for desktop always TRUE because of Firefox for desktop support responsive design for developer even you click Touch-Button or not!

I hope Mozilla will fix this in next version.

I'm using Firefox 28 desktop.

function isTouch()
{
    return !!("ontouchstart" in window) || !!(navigator.msMaxTouchPoints);
}

Answer 21

jQuery v1.11.3

There is a lot of good information in the answers provided. But, recently I spent a lot of time trying to actually tie everything together into a working solution for the accomplishing two things:

1. Detect that the device in use is a touch screen type device.
2. Detect that the device was tapped.

Besides this post and Detecting touch screen devices with Javascript, I found this post by Patrick Lauke extremely helpful: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/04/detecting-touch-its-the-why-not-the-how/

Here is the code...

$(document).ready(function() {
//The page is "ready" and the document can be manipulated.

    if (('ontouchstart' in window) || (navigator.maxTouchPoints > 0) || (navigator.msMaxTouchPoints > 0))
    {
      //If the device is a touch capable device, then...
      $(document).on("touchstart", "a", function() {

        //Do something on tap.

      });
    }
    else
    {
      null;
    }
});

Important! The *.on( events [, selector ] [, data ], handler ) method needs to have a selector, usually an element, that can handle the "touchstart" event, or any other like event associated with touches. In this case, it is the hyperlink element "a".

Now, you don't need to handle the regular mouse clicking in JavaScript, because you can use CSS to handle these events using selectors for the hyperlink "a" element like so:

/* unvisited link */
a:link 
{

}

/* visited link */
a:visited 
{

}

/* mouse over link */
a:hover 
{

}

/* selected link */
a:active 
{

}

Note: There are other selectors as well...

Answer 22

The problem

Due to hybrid devices which use a combination of touch and mouse input, you need to be able dynamically change the state / variable which controls whether a piece of code should run if the user is a touch user or not.

Touch devices also fire mousemove on tap.

Solution

1. Assume touch is false on load.
2. Wait until a touchstart event is fired, then set it to true.
3. If touchstart was fired, add a mousemove handler.
4. If the time between two mousemove events firing was less than 20ms, assume they are using a mouse as input. Remove the event as it's no longer needed and mousemove is an expensive event for mouse devices.
5. As soon as touchstart is fired again (user went back to using touch), the variable is set back to true. And repeat the process so it's determined in a dynamic fashion. If by some miracle mousemove gets fired twice on touch absurdly quickly (in my testing it's virtually impossible to do it within 20ms), the next touchstart will set it back to true.

Tested on Safari iOS and Chrome for Android.

Note: not 100% sure on the pointer-events for MS Surface, etc.

Codepen demo

---

const supportsTouch = 'ontouchstart' in window;
let isUsingTouch = false;

// `touchstart`, `pointerdown`
const touchHandler = () => {
  isUsingTouch = true;
  document.addEventListener('mousemove', mousemoveHandler);
};

// use a simple closure to store previous time as internal state
const mousemoveHandler = (() => {
  let time;
  
  return () => {
    const now = performance.now();

    if (now - time < 20) {
      isUsingTouch = false;
      document.removeEventListener('mousemove', mousemoveHandler);
    }

    time = now;
  }
})();

// add listeners
if (supportsTouch) {
  document.addEventListener('touchstart', touchHandler);
} else if (navigator.maxTouchPoints || navigator.msMaxTouchPoints) {
  document.addEventListener('pointerdown', touchHandler);
}

Answer 23

Right so there is a huge debate over detecting touch/non-touch devices. The number of window tablets and the size of tablets is increasing creating another set of headaches for us web developers.

I have used and tested blmstr's answer for a menu. The menu works like this: when the page loads the script detects if this is a touch or non touch device. Based on that the menu would work on hover (non-touch) or on click/tap (touch).

In most of the cases blmstr's scripts seemed to work just fine (specifically the 2018 one). BUT there was still that one device that would be detected as touch when it is not or vice versa.

For this reason I did a bit of digging and thanks to this article I replaced a few lines from blmstr's 4th script into this:

function is_touch_device4() {
    if ("ontouchstart" in window)
        return true;

    if (window.DocumentTouch && document instanceof DocumentTouch)
        return true;


    return window.matchMedia( "(pointer: coarse)" ).matches;
}

alert('Is touch device: '+is_touch_device4());
console.log('Is touch device: '+is_touch_device4());

Because of the lockdown have a limited supply of touch devices to test this one but so far the above works great.

I would appreceate if anyone with a desktop touch device (ex. surface tablet) can confirm if script works all right.

Now in terms of support the pointer: coarse media query seems to be supported. I kept the lines above since I had (for some reason) issues on mobile firefox but the lines above the media query do the trick.

Thanks