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Question

Web Clip "kiosk" functionality?

  • May 14, 2026
  • 3 replies
  • 212 views
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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?

    3 replies

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    • Ehouston3
    • Contributor
    • June 12, 2026

    I just went through this. I actually have a Jamf Nation post in review. Here’s what I did to get it working.

     

    1. There can only be a SINGLE web clip profile with a single web clip payload deployed to the iPad. I chose full screen but, it might not matter.

    2. The Single App profile MUST use the standard com.apple.webapp bundle id.

    That's it. If you do those two things, the single web clip will present in Single App mode.

    The linked article discussed how to get the unique payload ID from the Web Clip profile. I tried several iterations of that but, couldn’t get it to work. In hind-sight, com.apple.webap is the bundle identifier for the Web Clip app and if there are multiple apps with the same bundle id, it may not know which one to use which might be the case when there are multiple web clips deployed to the device. It must only recognize the com.apple.webapp bundle id and not even the unique payload identifiers within the web clip config itself.

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    • Ehouston3
    • Contributor
    • June 12, 2026

    Unfortunately,

    My excitement was too soon. This actually doesn’t work consistently. I was experiencing success because I happened to be launching the web clip initially, during my testing to ensure it was set correctly. So, when the single app profile applied, it worked. I wasn’t aware that this was causing it to work. When I wiped the device or returned it to service, I was met with the “white” webapp window.

     

    I played with a combination of a safari blueprint setting the start page and content restrictions along with Safari in single app to get a similar experience but, it wasn’t as nice as the web clip since the navigation bar is there. Here’s what Jamf Support wrote to me.
     

    “...After doing some internal digging on this, I can confirm that Single App Mode is not compatible with Web Clips. The standard "white" screen that you're seeing is a commonplace when enabling this function with a webclip. Our two options to get you to your end goal are to either:

    1. Use a third party app like WebFrame Pro Kiosk
      or
    2. Physically log in to each device to program in the URL you're looking to lock the browser into, all the while making the safari app the single app mode.”

    I was running into the second item unknowingly which “looked” like success. It can work the way I described but, the web clip must be launched once first before the single app is applied.

     

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    • cfsievers
    • Author
    • New Contributor
    • June 24, 2026

    Alas, your fate was the same as mine. Something like the third-party app would work but sadly we don’t have the budget to deploy it across our entire fleet. 

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