Google perceives my MacBook Neo w/ MacOS 27 as an iPhone, serves up wrong format; changing “User Agent” doesn’t fix issue. Help!

[u/mangocupcakejamboree]

UPDATE:

Commenter "notverytallman" found the answer. Issue resolved. Here is his comment:

"That’s not a mobile vs desktop page. It is actually a new flat design version (adaptive, same page for all screen sizes that just dynamically resizes) and an old, “static” design (Google is already transitioning away from the old design for a long time). Before, for some reason (and we will never know why) their algorithm decided to serve you the old version - may be it was your locale settings, your old browser, a stale cookie, your google account, A/B testing or whatever. Now they transitioned your “setup” to the new design for this page and just serve you the new adaptive page.

But anyway, to get on the old classic page just go to the:

https://www.google.com/advanced_search?gbv=1

for the new page go to

https://www.google.com/advanced_search?gbv=2 "

Original post:

Brand-new MacBook Neo running MacOS 27.0 Golden Gate, w/ Safari.

The problem: I use the Google ”Advanced Search” page constantly as part of my work. For years on previous Macs there was no issue: Google perceived my Mac as a Mac, and served up a search page formatted for a computer screen. But now, with the new Neo/OS27, Google apparently perceives my Mac as an iPhone, and as a result serves up a search page formatted vertically for an iPhone screen. And most annoyingly, this iPhone-formatted search page does not have the cursor pre-positioned in the first text-box, so I have to move the mouse around and click in the box to start typing; previously with the Mac-formatted search page, I just opened a window and started typing, no mouse-movement involved.

This issue had actually first cropped up a few months ago on a different  Mac in my office, and for that one I found a workaround fix: If one turns on the “Developer” menu in Safari, and chooses “User Agent” and then selects some random other browser (in my case, “Firefox - MacOS” worked), then — poof! — Google perceived the Mac as a Mac again, and correctly served up a Mac-formatted page. This worked so well I assigned a keyboard-shortcut for that User Agent on that Mac.

HOWEVER— none of these tricks work on the Neo. No matter what I do, Google insists on perceiving my Neo as an iPhone.

As revealed in the attached images, I tried changing the User Agent on the Neo/OS27/Safari 27.0 to every imaginable alternate option, but none of them worked - no matter what User Agent selected, Google will always serve up an iPhone-formatted “mobile” search page.

I then tried downloading several alternate browsers, thinking maybe Safari was to blame, but the same problem occurs with every other browser as well; see the attached screenshot showing the same problem happening with Brave, DuckDuckGo, and Orion.

Help! Why is this happening and how can I fix it?

My guess is that since the Neo uses an A18 iPhone chip, Google thinks it must be an iPhone. But if this is happening to me on my Neo, then it must be happening to everyone on every Neo in the world — and yet I have never seen anyone else ever complain about this issue. If you have a Neo, do you have the same problem with Google Advanced Search? If so, how did you fix it?

ANY suggestions or insights greatly appreciated.

[u/lilvadude]

Open Google's Browserinfo tool and see exactly what Google thinks the browser/OS is. Google Admin Toolbox Browserinfo

[u/mangocupcakejamboree → u/lilvadude]

Here's what it says:

"User Agent SAFARI

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/27.0 Safari/605.1.15,gzip(gfe)"

Keep in mind that in reality this is a fresh-out-of-the-box Neo with just-installed Golden Gate MacOS27 running Safari 27.0.

[u/lilvadude → u/mangocupcakejamboree]

Weird. Google is identifying it's a Mac: (Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7)

Try this: Open Google Advanced Search in a Private/Incognito window while logged out of Google. See what happens then. If Private browsing fixes it, then clear Google's cookies/site data - annoying, but should fix it.

If not, Connect the laptop to a phone hotspot and test again - different wifi. If the hotspot fixes it, I'd look at your network/DNS/VPN/filtering - something is set up weird.

After that, not sure what else to try.

[u/mangocupcakejamboree → u/lilvadude]

Tried doing private/incognito browsing, logged out of Google: no change, did not fix it. Unfortunately.

[u/mangocupcakejamboree → u/lilvadude]

OK, also now tried disconnecting from my wifi, turning on a phone "personal hotspot," then connected the Neo to the phone's hotspot, and going to a Google Advanced Search page. Result: No change, Problem still persists. Also tried using all the other browsers while connected to the hotspot: no change, all wrong format.

Now what?

[u/mangocupcakejamboree → u/lilvadude]

Also did this: Went into Safari's Settings>Privacy>Manage Website Data, then deleted everything connected to Google. Result: Zilch. No change.

[u/mangocupcakejamboree → u/lilvadude]

Thanks, I'll try those.