What is Do not track?

Do not track is an option set by users in many modern browsers to tell the websites and advertisers not to track their activities.

How to detect Do not track?

Detecting Do not track settings from a browser is different for different browsers.

For Chrome and Firefox browsers

• You need to use the navigator.doNotTrack property to detect the settings
• The property returns a string "1" if the do not track option is turned on and "0" if it is turned off.

// detect do not track option
// for chrome and firefox browsers

if (navigator.doNotTrack === "1") {
  // if the options is true
  console.log("Do not track is enabled");
} else {
  // if the option is false
  console.log("Do not track is not enabled");
}

For Safari browsers

• You need to use the window.doNotTrack property to detect the settings.
• The property returns a string "1" if the do not track option is turned on and "0" if it is turned off.

// detect do not track option
// for safari browsers

if (window.doNotTrack === "1") {
  // if the options is true
  console.log("Do not track is enabled");
} else {
  // if the option is false
  console.log("Do not track is not enabled");
}

Caveat: For some browsers, the doNotTrack property may return string yes or no instead of "1" or "0" 🧘‍♂️.

A universal detection method

To detect Do not track setting universally, you nned to check for both the naviagtor and window object for the doNotTrack property like this,

// check whether the browser support Do not track
if (naviagtor.doNotTrack || window.doNotTrack) {
  // if it supports
  // then check for the doNotTrack property in both of them
  if (
    window.doNotTrack === "1" ||
    navigator.doNotTrack === "1" ||
    navigator.doNotTrack === "yes"
  ) {
    // the options is enabled
    console.log("Do not track is enabled");
  } else {
    // the option is not enabled
    console.log("Do not track is not enabled");
  }
} else {
  console.log("Do Not track is not supported");
}

See this example live in JSBin.

Feel free to share if you found this useful 😃.

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