Is it possible to make Pavlovia experiment inaccessible on tablets and mobile devices?

Online experiments
1

Hi, I’ve been trying to make my project unable to be accessed via mobile phones and tablets and have hit a bit of a snag because it appears to still be running on my devices when I test it, has anyone had any luck doing this? Thanks!

2

This is interesting–I honestly never thought of participants using a phone/tablet… PsychoJS automatically records the device’s OS and puts it in your data output. They grab that info using window.navigator.platform; in their javascript code. Perhaps you can make a routine at the beginning of the experiment with a text component that says “phones/tablets not allowed, please exit the experiment” (or something) and set it to never end. Then you could make a js only code component in that routine that creates a variable os = window.navigator.platform; and make an if/then statement that only ends that routine (continueRoutine = false;) if the OS is windows or mac. So it will only show that text if they don’t have a computer OS and they can’t move on–only escape to leave the experiment. If the OS code doesn’t work, you could do the same thing with screen size (window.screen.width; & window.screen.height;) and say only screens that are larger than x can move on from that screen. I might try to start doing this as well.

3

Fortunately, there is code that already does this on Wakefield Morys-Carter’s Cribsheet: PsychoPy Python to Javascript crib sheet 2021 - Google Docs

This is the code, just pop it in the begin experiment section of a javascript only code component:

// Automatically exit if the experiment is running on a mobile device
if( /Android|webOS|iPhone|iPad|iPod|BlackBerry|IEMobile|Opera Mini/i.test(navigator.userAgent) ) {
  quitPsychoJS('Mobile device detected. Goodbye!', false)
}
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4

Press space to continue with a keyboard component will stop mobile device users in their tracks.

I think that this partially accounts for the high drop out rate in most PsychoPy experiments.

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5

I did NOT know this and was going to suggest something wild about detecting touches - great tip Wake and Tim!