win-detect-browsers

Fast and native browser detection on Windows. Detects installed versions of Beaker, Brave, Chrome, Chromium, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Maxthon, Opera, Safari and Yandex.

Table of Contents

Usage

If you are upgrading: please see the changelog.

const detect = require('win-detect-browsers')

// All browsers
detect(function (err, browsers) {
  if (err) throw err
  console.log(browsers)
})

// All browsers with promise
const browsers = await detect()

// Search only for Chrome and Firefox
detect(['chrome', 'firefox'], function (err, browsers) {
  if (err) throw err

  for (let b of browsers) {
    console.log(b.version) // '57.0.2931.0'
    console.log(b.channel) // 'canary'
  }
})

API

detect([names][, callback])

names is an array of browser names you want to find. If omitted or empty, it will detect everything. The callback receives an error if any and an array of results. A result is excluded if its path has no .exe extension or if its version could not be read. If no callback is provided, a promise is returned.

Each result is an object with the following properties:

• name (string): chrome, chromium, firefox, beaker, brave, ie, msedge, maxthon, opera, safari, yandex
• path (string): absolute path to executable
• version (string)
• arch (string): CPU type the executable was built for: amd64, i386 or other;
• info (object): executable metadata (see sample below).

Additional properties are usually available but not guaranteed:

• channel (string):
  • Chrome: stable, canary, beta or dev
  • Firefox: release, developer, nightly or esr
  • Older versions of Firefox: aurora, beta or rc;
  • Opera: stable, beta or developer.

CLI

win-detect-browsers [options] [name, name..]

Write browsers to stdout as a JSON array. Includes all browsers unless one or more names are given (see list above).

Options:

• --help -h: Show help
• --version -v: Show CLI version number
• --summary -s: Less properties;
• --debug -d: Enable debug output.

Sample

On Windows 10:

Install

With npm do:

npm install win-detect-browsers     # For API
npm install win-detect-browsers -g  # For CLI

Background

Browser detection on Windows can't be done right. This is the try-everything-and-fail-silently approach. It accounts for architecture differences, normalizes environment variables, tries default locations, searches the registry (in the HKLM and HKCU hives as well as WoW counterparts) (including Start Menu Internet Applications.aspx), Google Updater and more), and looks in PATH. Version numbers are then read from the executable metadata.

browser-launcher by substack has poor Windows support, and it prompted me to create this module. It is now used in browser-launcher2, an active a once active fork of browser-launcher.

License

MIT

Changelog

7.0.0 - 2021-11-12

Changed

• Breaking: bump win-version-info and yargs (b0c9ab0, b438175) (Vincent Weevers). Drops support of Node.js 8.
• Change CLI to always print result as JSON (88dc694) (Vincent Weevers)
• Remove xtend dependency (fbcba58) (Vincent Weevers)
• Refactor: remove unused pre hook (ec92805) (Vincent Weevers)
• Refactor: remove unused events and opts from Finder (48c683c) (Vincent Weevers)

Added

• Add promise support (ca8d84e) (Vincent Weevers)

Fixed

• Fix documentation of name (83a1f79) (Vincent Weevers).

6.0.0 - 2020-03-04

Changed

• Breaking: Stop detecting the Chrome-only guid & uninstall properties (#68) (@pimterry)
• Upgrade pascal-case from ~2.0.1 to ~3.1.1 (addbdab) (@vweevers)
• Unlock dependencies (5e370a1) (@vweevers)

5.0.0 - 2019-11-22

Changed

• Upgrade chalk from ~2.4.1 to ~3.0.0 (8c8849d) (@vweevers)
• Upgrade which from ~1.3.0 to ~2.0.1 (fdc033f) (@vweevers)
• Upgrade registry-js from ~1.8.0 to ~1.9.0 (#58) (@vweevers)
• Upgrade yargs from ~13.3.0 to ~15.0.1 (d45d938, a63e8bf, 8d73bdc) (@vweevers)

Added

• Detect the new chromium-based MS Edge (#60) (@pimterry)

Removed

• Breaking: remove bitness from chrome metadata (#61) (@vweevers)

Fixed

• Improve detection of Chrome channel variants (#61) (@pimterry)
• Avoid errors if the registry is not readable (#65) (@pimterry). Previously this could happen if the user did not have access to the given hive or key.

4.0.1 - 2019-08-17

Changed

• Upgrade registry-js from ~1.4.0 to ~1.8.0 (#51) (@vweevers)
• Upgrade yargs from ~13.2.2 to ~13.3.0 (#50) (@vweevers)
• Upgrade hallmark devDependency from ^0.1.0 to ^1.0.0 (#49) (@vweevers)
• Upgrade standard devDependency from ^12.0.1 to ^13.0.1 (#48) (@vweevers)
• Unlock devDependencies (e90ff25) (@vweevers)

4.0.0 - 2019-06-01

Changed

• Upgrade win-version-info from ~2.1.0 to ~3.0.0 (#46) (d92aee4)
• Upgrade resolve from ~1.8.1 to ~1.11.0 (0fda232, 1e0502a)
• Upgrade registry-js from ~1.0.7 to ~1.4.0 (0fda232, f1269fe)
• Upgrade yargs from ~12.0.4 to ~13.2.2 (0fda232)
• Upgrade tape devDependency from ~4.9.0 to ~4.10.1 (0fda232)
• Use standard badge style in README.md (fe624eb)

Added

• Add node 12 to AppVeyor (f3e8f2e)

Removed

• Drop support for PhantomJS (#44) (ca6448d) (@pimterry)
• Remove node 9 from AppVeyor (f3e8f2e)
• Drop node 6 (#38) (0fda232)

3.1.0 - 2018-11-24

Changed

• Move changelog to CHANGELOG.md

Added

• Detect Beaker
• Detect Brave
• Add hallmark devDependency

Fixed

• Fix race issue (#36)

3.0.0 - 2018-11-24

Changed

• Move registry-js and win-version-info out of optionalDependencies. Both are safe to install on all platforms and export a noop on non-windows.
• Update debug, resolve and yargs
• Add standard

3.0.0-rc1 - 2018-05-20

Changed

• Error-first callback: cb(err, browsers) instead of cb(browsers)
• Remove streams: with new metadata being discovered via multiple avenues, results have to be merged before we can emit something;
• More than 2x faster by using native modules: registry-js to read the Windows Registry and win-version-info to read executable metadata. No longer spawns child processes.

Added

• Add Node 6, 8, 9, 10
• Add release channel for Chrome, Firefox and Opera
• Add executable metadata and CPU type to all browsers
• Support phantomjs-prebuilt (2.x) as well as phantomjs (1.x)
• Detect Firefox ESR
• Add Firefox Developer Edition default location;
• Add Firefox Nightly default location.

Removed

• Drop Node 0.10, 4, 5
• Drop XP and Vista
• Remove version option;
• Remove lucky option.

2.1.0 - 2015-05-05

Changed

• Replace fs.exists() with path-exists (7ec303c)
• Prefer native cscript (8676bfb) (#18)

Fixed

• Uppercase environment variables (a2395b8)

2.0.0 - 2015-05-03

Changed

• Speed improvement (2-4x), because it uses a single cscript process to query the registry (replaces reg queries) and a single cscript process to get the version numbers (replaces wmic queries).
• Exports a readable object stream, but 1.x callback style is still supported
• Only emits executables (*.exe)
• No longer uses command-line version flags or version numbers found in the registry or elsewhere. This simplifies the process and makes the version numbers consistent and more detailed.