I need to lock down some iPads to only display a single web page. These devices are supervised, and will be handed out to study participants in a lab. They’ll then interact with that single web page during the course of their participation in the study. We don’t want the participants to be able to launch any other app, configure any iOS settings, or visit any other website.
This article, “Configuring Single App Mode for Web Clips in Jamf Pro,” which was just published four months ago, seems to be exactly the sort of thing I’m looking for. However, when I attempt to implement it on my test device, all I get is a blank white screen with the iOS status bar on top of it.
I have tried using both com.apple.webapp and com.apple.webapp.managed as Bundle ID values in my Single App Mode payload. Both have the same result. The Jamf article seems to possibly imply I need to find a Bundle ID value that is specific to the web clip I’ve defined, as it references another article titled Determining the Bundle ID of a particular webclip. But that link goes to something hosted in ServiceNow, and I get what seems like a 403 error when attempting to access it.
The device can reach the URL with Safari if it’s operating without either configuration profile applied. If I remove the test device just from the scope of the Single App Mode configuration profile, I can tap the Web Clip icon and it launches normally and goes to the desired URL.
It seems like this should be dead simple, according to the first article. I have no idea what Jamf might have intended to communicate in the second article.
I have skimmed the topic here and elsewhere with a few searches about web clips and it doesn’t seem like folks have had much success trying to get this done using just Jamf Pro. Am I chasing a phantom? Is there any truth or substance to Jamf’s article?