Big Sur - System Preference Restrictions & "Battery" Menu

cornwella
New Contributor III

We have a Configuration Profile restriction set up for Macbook Air M1 devices (MacBookAir10,1) to limit student access to entries in the System Preferences pane. One of the new options in Big Sur is the "Battery" entry (see bottom left in the attached screenshot).

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In Jamf's Restrictions screen, there is no equivalent to this panel to enable access to the Battery settings if the "Enable Selected Items" option is checked. The previous "Energy Saver" toggle being allowed does not render the "Battery" option accessible, and there is no "Battery" entry in the list (see screenshot below).

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Could this be added in a future Jamf release? We're currently on self-hosted 10.26.0. I imagine we can work around this using the "Disable selected items" option instead, but that would involve restructuring the entire Configuration Profile.

Thank you!

9 REPLIES 9

MasterNovice
Contributor

Interested in this as well. We previously used the security authorizationdb write system.preferences.energysaver allow method by scripting it in with other preference options for non admin users and pushing with Jamf School. This appears to have changed with the revamp of energy and battery in Big Sur. The odd item for us is that, in at least one case, the user is an admin and should already have write on any plists for preferences (I'd think?) That admin user still sees the "Your administrator has not given you access to this pane" with battery greyed out.

walkeri3rd
New Contributor III

Has there been any movement in this? Would like to be able to manage this from with in Jamf.

MacGeek
New Contributor III

This has become a very needed capability at our company! This should've been done when Big Sur was released. Has anyone been working on this?

Just circling back around on this, I never updated. For us (we use School, not Pro) this turned out to be the way we have our restrictions set up. In our main restrictions Profile where we had this set up, We had it like a default whitelist. "Enable" was the top level choice, and then we just ticked the boxes for what we wante to enable. This didn't work with Battery specifically for whatever reason. So, we reversed it, chose "Disable items" at the top level of the Restrictions payload and then didn't tick the box for Battery. We never revisited since this resolved for us, but maybe it's the case for you as well?

MacGeek
New Contributor III

Thanks MasterNovice,

That worked for me also! I wonder what's going to happen when OS X 12 is released?

We have the same desire and found that same setting disabled the 'Battery' pane for us as well. The issue we're having is that we have third-party apps that we'd like to ensure are also blocked, which aren't managed through MDM. So we enable only what we want and the rest is disabled. This would all be a lot easier if Jamf would just implement the payload setting. Still waiting.

jttavares
New Contributor III

With Monterey, add "Passwords" as well.  

emptypony61
New Contributor III

Did this get fixed? I am still seeing it. 

MacMasterFlex
New Contributor II

According to JAMF support this issue is a known "bug" lol How have they not addressed it yet I don't understand. The inversion method above that support suggested is not working for me in JAMF Pro. Wondering if it is only a School thing?