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Jamf School. Preventing an app being disabled by Jamf Teacher or Jamf Parent.

  • September 30, 2025
  • 3 replies
  • 46 views
R
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Hi all

       I’ve got an problem with my Jamf deployment at the moment and the way we use our iPads. Essentially, our filtering and monitoring solution relies upon an app being running in order to re-connect the filtering VPN if disconnected. When teachers restrict students to a specific app or apps, the filtering and monitoring app gets disabled and thus the VPN disconnects.

Is there a way to force an app to never be able to be disabled by Jamf Parent or Jamf Teacher? ie. I’d like it so that if a teacher says “Right, no more anything other than Goodnotes” the filtering and monitoring app is not disabled and continues to run.

 

Thanks in advance for any advice with this.

3 replies

GregBobbett
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  • GregBobbett
  • Jamf Heroes
  • September 30, 2025

This is one of the reasons we had to remove the Parent app from our district when we moved to a different content filtering service this year. We even put in a ticket about the Parent app issue and we were told that the results were as expected. We still use Jamf Teacher and I believe that I have it set so it won’t disable the filtering. But you’re making me think that I need to re-test it just to make sure.

There is an option to ‘Show app in Jamf School Teacher’ under the Options section on the app info page in Jamf School. that will supposedly not allow their settings to affect the designated app. It basically hides the app from the Jamf Teacher app. At least that’s the way we understand it’s functionality.

There is no option like that for Jamf Parent though. There used to be a checkbox in the Options section of an app, but we pointed it out and they informed us that is was a non-functioning checkbox because “It looks like at one point there were plans to add some app access functionality to Jamf Parent but those functions never made it to production.” And now the option is no longer there.

I’d recommend submitting this information to ideas.jamf.com as a feature request. We decided to just bail completely on Jamf Parent since we only had a dozen or so families using it anyway.

Greg Bobbett
R
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  • Rilot
  • Author
  • New Contributor
  • October 1, 2025

Hiding the app from Jamf Teacher still removes it when they lock the students to a specific set of apps. It just prevents them from locking students to that app or distributing it.

GregBobbett
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  • GregBobbett
  • Jamf Heroes
  • October 1, 2025

Hiding the app from Jamf Teacher still removes it when they lock the students to a specific set of apps. It just prevents them from locking students to that app or distributing it.

Correct. It doesn’t disable the app (in our case the on-device content filtering app) it just hides it plus it’s one less that teachers have in the list of apps.

Our issue was that the Parent app has a way to actually disable/block apps just like a Blocking profile in Jamf School. And if not used correctly the parent could accidentally disable our content filter or even permanently block it under a specific set of circumstances. It was a small percentage possibility, but enough for admin to decide to pull the ability to use the Parent app. 

Greg Bobbett
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