Allowed devices
Allowed devices lets a site open only on the platforms you choose. Typical uses are a mobile-only promo page, a web app built for iOS and Android, a download page for one operating system, or a landing page that desktop visitors should not see.
In the site’s settings, Advanced tab, Allowed devices, untick the platforms that should not see the site:
| Platform | Detected as |
|---|---|
| Windows | Windows desktops and laptops |
| Linux | Linux desktops (Android is detected separately) |
| Android | Android phones and tablets |
| iOS | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| macOS | Mac computers |
| Other | everything else: ChromeOS, bots, curl, scripts, clients that say nothing about their platform |
All platforms are allowed by default. Visitors from an unticked platform get a 404, or your own block page for this section.
How the platform is detected
Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Edge, Opera, Samsung Internet and others) send a Sec-CH-UA-Platform header over HTTPS, and when it is present, WardPane uses it. Otherwise the platform is read from the User-Agent. Responses of a site with device rules carry Vary: User-Agent, Sec-CH-UA-Platform, so caches keep separate copies.
Limits
The filter gives no security. Both headers are written by the client and take seconds to change: anyone who wants to see the page from a blocked platform can do it with browser developer tools or a User-Agent switcher. Use the filter to decide what ordinary visitors see, and never to hide anything secret.
Safari on iPad requests the “desktop version” of sites by default and then introduces itself as a Mac. Such an iPad is detected as macOS, not iOS.
Unticking “Other” also blocks most link preview bots, monitoring services and many search engine crawlers, since they do not report a phone or desktop platform. (Some crawlers, such as Google’s smartphone crawler, imitate a phone and are detected as that phone.) If search engines must see the site, keep “Other” ticked.
Addresses in the site’s allow list are exempt from the protection rules, but the device filter still applies to them. It decides which content a platform gets and has nothing to do with abuse.
Requests refused by this filter are not counted in the site’s protection statistics.