Why does my browser seem out of date when I don't think it is?

Updated at: Feb 18, 2022

Some visitors to our site will find that we notify them that their browser is considered out of date, even though there are no more updates available for their browser and platform.

There can be a few reasons why this might be happening to you:

1. Your user agent has been changed and is impersonating a different type/version of browser

   Your user agent may have been changed, which is causing your web browser to appear to be a different web browser than it actually is.

2. You are using an "Extended Support Release" (ESR) version of your browser

   The only web browser we know of which has this problem is Firefox ESR (Extended Support Release). If you are using the ESR version of Firefox you will still get a warning that your browser is out of date, even though you might be using the latest version of Firefox ESR.

   The reason for this is that Firefox ESR doesn't provide any mechanism for us to detect that you're using the ESR version - it just looks like you're using an older version of Firefox, and so our website says that your browser is out of date.

   Unfortunately there's nothing we can do about this.

3. The operating system you're using doesn't support the latest version of your web browser any more.

   An notorious example of this is Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP. Internet Explorer 8 is long out of date and has serious security and functionality problems, however technically speaking it's still the latest version of Internet Explorer for the Windows XP operating system; so someone could argue that it's still the latest version and that the update warning shouldn't be shown.

   However, we take the approach that just because the latest version of a web browser is no longer compatible with the operating system you're using it doesn't mean that it's up to date or safe to use. We hope that these kinds of warnings prompt users to stop using horribly old and dangerous software and make the effort to update their systems and browsers and be safer online.

4. The web browser you use is tied to the operating system you use and that operating system is out of date.

   Some web browsers - in particular Safari on iOS - are very closely tied to the underlying operating system on that device. When that operating system stops getting update from the manufacturer the browser will stop being upated as well.

   A recent example of this is the case of iOS 12.4.3 and Safari 12.1.2.

   The release of iOS 13 in September 2019 brought in Safari 13.0 as well. As such, Safari 12.x is no longer the latest version branch of Safari and we automatically started to give the usual warnings about upgrading.

   However on October 28, 2019, Apple released a special update to iOS 12, fixing some important security problems; this also included an updated version of Safari 12. This special update for iOS 12 is only intended for older devices which don't support iOS 13 (iPhone 5s, iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, iPad Air, iPad mini 2 and 3, and iPod touch 6th generation). Lots of people still have these devices and have installed the update. So we've made a special exception and decided to change the warnings for iOS 12; because in this case Safari 12 is the latest version of Safari which runs on iOS.

   So if you've got Safari 12 on iOS 12, you'll be prompted to update to the latest version of Safari 12.x, not Safari 13.x

We hope this all makes sense; it can be tricky to explain these kinds of complicated things with out getting too technical and confusing!

If anything isn't clear, please contact us and we'll do our best to explain it better.