# Mobile Mode
URL: /overview/sessions-api/mobile-mode

---
title: Mobile Mode
sidebarTitle: Mobile Mode
description: Create browser sessions that appear as mobile devices with full mobile fingerprints and touch capabilities.
llm: true
---

### Overview

Mobile mode allows Steel sessions to appear as mobile devices. Pass `deviceConfig: { device: "mobile" }` when creating a session and the browser presents itself with mobile user agent, viewport, touch capabilities, and browser characteristics—everything aligned to look like a phone instead of desktop.

Most websites serve fundamentally different experiences to mobile devices. Desktop sites have nested navigation, hover menus, and complex interactions. Mobile sites strip these away into linear flows and touch-optimized interfaces. For AI agents, this simplification can directly improve task completion.

### How It Works

<CodeTabs storage="languageSwitcher">

```typescript !! Typescript -wcn
import Steel from 'steel-sdk';
import { chromium } from 'playwright';

const client = new Steel({ steelAPIKey: process.env.STEEL_API_KEY });

// Create a session with mobile device configuration
const session = await client.sessions.create({
  deviceConfig: { device: "mobile" }
});

// Connect to the mobile session
const browser = await chromium.connectOverCDP(
  `wss://connect.steel.dev?apiKey=${process.env.STEEL_API_KEY}&sessionId=${session.id}`
);

const page = await browser.contexts()[0].pages()[0];
await page.goto('https://example.com');
```

```python !! Python -wcn
from steel import Steel
from playwright.async_api import async_playwright
import os

client = Steel(steel_api_key=os.environ.get("STEEL_API_KEY"))

# Create a session with mobile device configuration
session = client.sessions.create(
    device_config={"device": "mobile"}
)

# Connect to the mobile session
async with async_playwright() as p:
    browser = await p.chromium.connect_over_cdp(
        f"wss://connect.steel.dev?apiKey={os.environ.get('STEEL_API_KEY')}&sessionId={session.id}"
    )
    
    page = browser.contexts[0].pages[0]
    await page.goto('https://example.com')
```

</CodeTabs>

The session automatically configures mobile viewport dimensions, touch events, and a full mobile device fingerprint. Sites see a consistent mobile device visiting from a browser app, not a desktop browser with a spoofed user agent. Before this, you could override the user agent string, but the rest of the fingerprint wouldn't match—sites would detect the inconsistency.

Mobile mode works with all existing features including proxies, CAPTCHA solving, and session persistence.

### Why This Matters

**Simplified Navigation**

Mobile sites present content sequentially rather than using nested menus or hover states. An e-commerce checkout that requires navigating dropdown menus on desktop becomes a vertical list on mobile. Fewer interactive elements means clearer action spaces and less chance of mistakes.

**Performance and Cost Benefits**

Mobile sites load faster with fewer widgets and less aggressive lazy-loading. They also have simpler DOM structures. Less HTML for your model to process means lower token costs. If you're using vision, it means fewer image tokens too.

**Consistent Fingerprints**

Without mobile mode, your sessions use desktop fingerprints by default. Mobile mode provides a complete, consistent mobile device fingerprint that websites trust.

:::callout
type: help
### Need help with mobile mode?
Reach out to us on the <span className="font-bold">#help</span> channel on [Discord](https://discord.gg/steel-dev) or [@steeldotdev](https://twitter.com/steeldotdev).

Part of Steel's launch week. More at [steel.dev/launch-week](https://steel.dev/launch-week).
:::