Supervised Apple Devices Explained

Apple has provided an additional level of control for the MDM provider through device supervision. Generally, devices are unsupervised (a home-owned device for example) and this can only be achieved by following specific enrollment methods. Edlink supports a school supervising their devices as this gives the school all the control they are allowed to have on an Apple device, and it allows Edlink to send special commands and configurations to the device.

It is important to decide if you would like to supervise your devices because a device must be reinitialized when enabling or disabling supervised mode. Since this reinitialization will also remove the device from the MDM platform, supervision should be enabled before or during enrollment. 

Edlink has an icon to easily let you know if your device is supervised or not. If you see the following in the device list view then the device is supervised:  
If you are in the device detail view and the glasses are blue, then the device is supervised:

The additional control with supervising an Apple device

The following are the most popular features when a device is under supervision:

• Lost Mode - If your device is lost then you can set it to lost mode where a screen displays on the device which can display a message and not allow the user into the device without a specific code. 
• Auto application install without prompts - Install applications without needing the user to accept the prompt conditions in their device.
• Single Application mode - Force the device to run a single application (blocking all other application use)
• Home screen layout and wallpaper - Customize the home screen application layout by adding folders, rearranging where the applications will be as well as set the wallpaper to an image of your choice (this is usually the schools logo). 
• Application restrictions - Whitelist or blacklist certain applications from being used.
• Passcode changes - Change passcode information on behalf of a user.

Setting your Apple device to supervised mode

There are two different methods for placing an Apple device in supervised mode:

Connect the device via USB to an Apple Computer running Apple Configurator software. 

(Please note - The device will be factory reset during this process)

Please click here a step-by-step guide on the above method: