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Why don't browsers tell the server whether the user has a touch screen? This seems like a perfectly reasonable thing that the website should know before delivering the page, and users who are hyper privacy focused could toggle a setting to not send this info.

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A touch screen has @media (pointer: coarse)

CSS can be used to style elements accordingly: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media/poin...

No need to get the server involved.

Thanks. Does the server really send the info to construct all possible page configurations for all possible devices? And if so, why are the websites still rendering with touch-interface objects when we doesn't have touch, as reported by OP? (The lack of touch screen ability seems like it should trump things like screen resolution.)

Laptops and desktops can have touchscreens too. When having a small viewport less stuff fits on screen and thus a different design is required, we may associate this with our smartphones but they also work for mouse/keyboard input.

I know large screens can have touch. I'm asking why they are sending the instructions for rendering a page requiring touch controls to devices that don't have touch interfaces. (Seems like a waste of bandwidth, but maybe it ends up being insignificant overall.)

Because many laptop users have a touch screen.

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