macOS - Enforce Bluetooth On

[jbisgett]

We have recently started using Apple Classroom on our student MacBooks. The students have already figured out that disabling bluetooth interferes with classroom working.

Has anyone figured out a way to force bluetooth on or check to see if bluetooth is disabled and turn it back on? I know that there is an option in configuration profiles to restrict bluetooth on iOS devices, but have not found this option for macOS devices.

[ryan_martindale]

We've run into this situation as well. What I do is create a Configuration Profile and use the Restrictions payload. Under Preferences > Restrict items in System Preferences, I disable Bluetooth. The only downside is if the student has Bluetooth headphones, they will not be able to use them.

[larry_barrett]

I tell the teacher the ways students can hide from Classroom. I also remind them that technology can't fix all classroom discipline issues.

Life is too short to lock down bluetooth settings.

[jbisgett]

Yea, that was the same thing I told my teachers when I found that the Bluetooth preference wasn’t available in the Mac config profile. I was just looking to see if anyone had developed a technical solution to keep the teachers from....complaining about it.

[GabeShack]

I'd bet we could write a launch daemon that notices if Bluetooth is turned off and automatically turns it back on so the students could still sync up headphones, but not be able to disable bluetooth.

Maybe when I get some free time...lol.

Gabe Shackney
Princeton Public Schools

[Robert_MSD25]

Has anyone spent time on this? I'm surprised (not really) that Apple would allow us to hide the bluetooth prefpane, but not allow us to hide it from Control Center. (or hide Control Center altogether).  DEP devices managed via MDM should not have these kinds of roadblocks.

[Keith__Myers]

Four years later and still no help from Apple on this problem. I wrote and deployed btenforce and it completely resolved the situation for macOS.