Why is Chrome loading desktop versions of sites on Android even when 'Desktop site' is unchecked?

That’s definitely one route! I’ve run into something similar when I was testing a full-stack project and found that ‘localhost:3000’ was pointing to the local machine’s server on port 3000. So, in my case, the issue might not have been strictly related to Chrome’s user-agent but to how local environments handle requests.

However, I did see the same problem on Android, where the mobile layout wasn’t getting served, even though the ‘Desktop site’ toggle was unchecked. It turned out the ‘Mobile’ token wasn’t present in the User-Agent string, just like Rashmi mentioned. Resetting Chrome flags and making sure no extensions were interfering helped me sort it out.