iPadOS 26

[u01jmg3]

Bug Report

Problem

What is expected to happen?

Device version returned as 26

What does actually happen?

Device version returned as 19

Information

With the upcoming release of iPadOS 26, which skips 19-25 in order to follow the year, this plugin does not output the correct device version.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPadOS_26

Command or Code

device.version

Environment, Platform, Device

iPadOS

Version information

• cordova: 12
• cordova-ios: 7.1.1
• cordova-plugin-device: 1.3.5
• Xcode: 16.1.0

Checklist

• I searched for existing GitHub issues
• I updated all Cordova tooling to most recent version
• I included all the necessary information above

[breautek]

I don't think this should be considered a bug, but I'll leave this issue open in case my opinion is the odd one out.

I'll explain my rationale though:

Our docs states:

Get the operating system version.

which is similar language to the Apple documentation on UIDevice systemVersion. [UIDevice systemVersion] being the API used to fetch the version string:

cordova-plugin-device/src/ios/CDVDevice.m

Line 94 in 2c6219f

@"version": [device systemVersion],

I understand it might not be very intuitive obvious but it's Apple's decision to stop using the OS version as their marketing name. The version should continue to represent the OS version, as signaled from the iOS SDK.

Changing the behaviour to conditionally check for OS >= 19 would be a breaking change to any one who decided to handle mapping the OS version to the marketing name, and would deviate from the documentation.

If the version is being used to display information in the UI, I think it should be responsibility of the application to map the OS version to the marketing name where necessary. Keeping the version attribute as the logical OS version.

[u01jmg3]

I don't disagree with what you've said - thanks for looking into this.

Would having a new attribute be a better approach? Either that or a note in the docs to mention iPadOS 26 and future versions.

[breautek]

Would having a new attribute be a better approach? Either that or a note in the docs to mention iPadOS 26 and future versions.

From an API standpoint, yes it definitely would be a better approach to have a marketing version field.

But from a maintainer perspective I'm not so sure if Apache should be responsible for providing the marketing name.

If we assume Apple will release a version every year, then determining the name is as simple as version + 7... but that might be an unsafe assumption to make, even if that's been Apple's pattern for probably as long as I've been doing mobile development.

For other platforms, localization might also be required, e.g. Android had the names: Nougat, oreo, etc, though I think Android have stopped using names and now has version numbers nowadays.

If the plugin did provide the marketing name, the requirements may expand to hard-to-maintain levels since it needs to support a very wide audience.

So I think it's better for the plugin to provide the logical OS as it does, and defer to the application to determine the marketing name tailored to their specific needs/supported languages, etc.