The website does not respond to requests from the desktop version.

[ling]

Hi developers, I'm running Firefox on an Android tablet and ran into an issue. When I enable the desktop version of the browser, accessing websites (like searching on Baidu) fails to load the desktop version. I compared Edge browser with Firefox and found through website UserAgent detection that when Edge runs desktop websites, it switches UserAgent to Linux, while Firefox maintains Android UserAgent for desktop sites. This causes some websites to ignore network requests and load mobile versions. To resolve this, we need to disable and re-enable desktop website access first, which may allow the site to respond to desktop requests.

Can I adjust the settings to switch to the desktop version of the website? I don't want to switch to another browser.

These text are from translation.

[ling]

I now understand why desktop web pages still appear as mobile versions when accessed through browsers after enabling the 'Always request desktop version' setting. When this setting is enabled, the browser detects these websites as using the UA [Mozilla/5.0 (Android 15; Mobile; rv:147.0) Gecko/147.0 Firefox/147.0]. However, when the desktop version is re-enabled via the quick access menu, the websites switch to the UA [Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:147.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/147.0], prompting the browser to serve the desktop version.

From translator

[ling]

test web "baidu.com"

[lintaglenn]

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@ling wrote:

Hi developers, I'm running Firefox on an Android tablet and ran into an issue. When I enable the desktop version of the browser, accessing websites (like searching on Baidu) fails to load the desktop version. I compared Edge browser with Firefox and found through website UserAgent detection that when Edge runs desktop websites, it switches UserAgent to Linux, while Firefox maintains Android UserAgent for desktop sites. This causes some websites to ignore network requests and load mobile versions. To resolve this, we need to disable and re-enable desktop website access first, which may allow the site to respond to desktop requests.

Can I adjust the settings to switch to the desktop version of the website? I don't want to switch to another browser.

These text are from translation.

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I also have the same issue on Firefox for Android, and it is especially frustrating when the desktop-site option appears to be enabled but the website still behaves as if it is receiving a normal Android browser request. The User-Agent difference mentioned here seems like an important detail, because some websites may rely heavily on User-Agent detection when deciding whether to serve their desktop or mobile interface. I have also noticed that simply switching the desktop option on and off can sometimes change how a page loads, which makes it feel more like the setting is not being applied consistently rather than the website itself being completely unavailable. Since the issue happens on specific sites, it would be interesting to know whether Firefox intentionally keeps the Android User-Agent while requesting desktop content.