On
the Web, a user agent is a
software agent responsible for retrieving and facilitating
end-user
In product development, an end user (sometimes end-user) is a person who ultimately uses or is intended to ultimately use a product. The end user stands in contrast to users who support or maintain the product, such as sysops, system administrato ...
interaction with Web content.
This includes all
web browser
A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...
s, such as
Google Chrome and
Safari
A safari (; originally ) is an overland journey to observe wildlife, wild animals, especially in East Africa. The so-called big five game, "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, African leopard, leopard, rhinoceros, African elephant, elep ...
, some
email clients, standalone
download managers like
youtube-dl, and other
command-line utilities like
cURL.
The user agent is the client in a
client–server system. The
HTTP User-Agent header is intended to clearly identify the agent to the server.
However, this header can be omitted or
spoofed,
so some websites use
other detection methods.
References
Clients (computing)
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