User agent

On the Web, a user agent is a software agent responsible for retrieving and facilitating end-user interaction with Web content.

[1] This includes all web browsers, such as Google Chrome and Safari, some email clients, standalone download managers like youtube-dl, and other command-line utilities like cURL.

The HTTP User-Agent header is intended to clearly identify the agent to the server.

[2] However, this header can be omitted or spoofed,[2] so some websites use other detection methods.

This World Wide Web–related article is a stub.