How do I disable browser feature detection completely?

By default, Matomo accesses information from the visitor’s browser to detect the current browser resolution and what browser plugins are supported. This information is used for:

  • To show you reports on your visitor’s browser resolution.
  • To show you reports on your visitor’s supported browser plugins. For example, if the browser supports PDF.
  • To generate a short-lived identifier for every visitor, which we call the config_id.

Some privacy regulations like Germany’s ePrivacy implementation TTDSG § 25 para. 1 may only allow accessing information that is stored on a visitor’s device after having consent. If this applies to you, call the below method to no longer access any of this information.

_paq.push(['disableBrowserFeatureDetection']);

When this method is called, then no browser features are being accessed, and they also aren’t used to create the short-lived identifier (similar to a fingerprint). The browser resolution will be also no longer tracked and won’t appear in your reports in Matomo any more.

Please note that if you want to avoid asking for consent, it may not be required to call this method as Matomo’s “Fingerprint”, the config ID, changes every 24 hours and is therefore not a long-lived fingerprint. This is subject to interpretations. Learn more about Does Matomo use a fingerprint and how is it processed?

If you later want to enable browser feature detection again, for example after a visitor gave you consent, call:

_paq.push(['enableBrowserFeatureDetection']);

This feature requires Matomo 4.7 or newer.

Previous FAQ: How do I let visitors opt-out from tracking?