Blocking or removing iPad Apps

[lpboetc]

We have students who are abusing social media apps during school hours. Is there a way to uninstall them from supervised iPads, and/or block them from being installed or running?

[bburdeaux]

You can blacklist specific apps with a restrictions profile, though with the sheer number of social media apps out there these days that may be a losing battle. We have the app store restricted and only allow students to install what we put in self service.

[lpboetc]

I have warned the admins about that, but they are specifically asking about Snapchat. Can I remove it if they already have it installed, and how would I do that plus how would I block them re-installing it?

[cdenesha]

@lpboetc In a Configuration Profile, Restrictions, iOS and tvOS, Applications - add the bundle ID for SnapChat. This will Hide it if it is installed and thus it cannot be used.

[spif_spaceman]

For any of you that have seen parents/teachers upset at the vulgarities used in the News app, I found a workaround.

Provided that students are using managed apple IDs, and do not have access to the App Store - I just delete the News app or whatever app is offending the parents/teachers. Then students cannot re-install the apps, like News, since they cannot access the App Store. :)

[RBaber]

I agree, in our district in my district wide Configuration Profile, i restrict the news app. All apps are scoped through Smart Groups so its easy to have granular scoping of app restrictions for students and staff.

[robii]

This isn't a direct answer to your problem but you might be able to modify this. We allow Spotify but it caches so much data that it maxes out the iPad's storage. What we did to help combat this is to purchase 700 licenses and made it available in Self Service. We then set it to "Make the app managed if unmanaged". Now anyone with the app installed has it become a managed app. I then created a Smart Group of all devices that are using 95% or more of the storage. I scoped Spotify to all devices but excluded the 95% device full Smart Group. Now a student can install it, it becomes managed. When they nearly fill up their iPad (95%), they are removed from the scope and the app gets deleted thus freeing up space. They can then reinstall it but all the cached data is cleared. It is not perfect because the culprit may be a different app but it has helped us.