Shared iPad not allowing new users

[awright]

We have been using shared iPads setup for 2 users for the last few years. This has worked well until the update to iPados 13. Now we get the 'To add a new user, contact your administrator.' when the second user tries to login.

I have tried wiping and resetting up iPads but hasn't fixed the problem. I tried changing the number of users to 3 and then it works for the first two users but then gives the error again when the 3rd user tries to login.

Has anyone else had this issue with iPados?

[claudiogardini]

YES!!
One of our customers started seeing this issue with iOS 13. Interestingly if you try to login over and over again it suddenly works in many cases.
Also if you delete all Users from a iPad a new User is able to log in. The second User gets the Error Message again.

[claudiogardini]

We just heard from our Apple Rep that he was able to reproduce the issue with ZuluDesk. So it seems a iOS issue.

[awright]

Ok thanks for that. Glad it is not just me. Hopefully Apple will fix soon.

[erwin_c]

Same issue here and it is causing a lot of problems for our teachers.

Is there a workaround?

[jwebber]

We have the same issue (JamF School) asking to contact and administrator and have to clear users off the iPad (by deleting Shared Users) in ZuluDesk to allow a new one on. Very annoying!

[mooler]

Only solution so far is to manually remove user from the device via JAMF Pro. It's a hustle due to not having a mass action for this.

[claudiogardini]

There is a Issue where the EDU Profile fails to install properly under 10.13. This prevents Classroom from working. The Issue will be addressed in a 10.17.1 Hotfix. I don't know if the Shared iPad Issues is fixed with that as well. Since both depend on the EDU Profile it is possible.

[nstevo]

We have this same issue. However, I'm beginning to think it may be an Apple problem as we were previously using Meraki instead of JAMF and had the same thing happen there...
But, I can also see that many of the current users on any iPad state 'yes' under the 'data to sync' setting, which makes me think the iPad isn't allowing them to be kicked off to be replaced with a new user whilst they still have data that need syncing. However, this never changes...

[nanfay]

@nstevo is the 'data to sync' setting for the users something in Meraki or in Jamf? If it is in Jamf, where would I see that info?

[Leamington]

Has any one found a solution for this issue? We are now having the same issue.

[awright]

Not yet. Still not working with 13.3.1. It is making our iPads very useless at the moment.

[mickgrant]

It's an issue that has been around since the start of shared iPads, I have seen in for years.

when too many users attempt to login and logout in a row the device has no time to upload the user profiles back to apple cloud, so it can't hot-swap the users out.
there is no fix for this, it woking as expected... iPads won't swap out users till their data is safe
the workaround is to add more possible shared users in your prestage. so that the cycle has to be repeated more before the error occurs. as soon as the devices are left logged out, and idle all the data gets uploaded. and the users will swap out... if you think within a session 5 users might log in and logout, then share the iPad for 10 users in your prestage giving you breathing room in case more then expected logins occur.

[awright]

This is a different issue than that as our iPads work fine on iOS 12. Any iPads running iPadOS 13 have this issue and it doesn't matter how long you leave the iPad to sync data it still will not allow additional users.

I have contacted Apple Enterprise Support and they have acknowledged the issue and passed it to engineering. Not sure if there will be a quick resolution.

[nanfay]

@awright we also have this issue and have an open ticket with Apple Enterprise support. In our case seems related to the capacity of the iPad combined with configuration for max number of users. 32 GB iPads configured for up to 10 users will get this message on the 9th or 10th user. Deleting one of the shared iPad users allows login of a new user. 32 GB iPads setup for 5 and 3 users are fine and work as expected. 64 GB iPads configured for 10 users are likewise fine. No confirmation from Apple yet, but it seems that there is a problem in that you can configure a device for 10 users even if the device may not have enough physical space for that many users. Per Apple's documentation each user needs a minimum of 1.4 GB of space (or 1 GB of space depending on which document you are reading). A formatted 32 GB device appears to have somewhere between 26 and 27 GBs of space. Allowing for the specified 10 GB for system and 8 GB for apps and media, and then doing the math, it is apparent that IF the devices have to follow the recommended minimum per user then they can't possibly have 10 users. What I can't figure out is why the problem is only appearing now with iPadOS 13 but did not happen with iOS 12.

The response so far from Apple is that engineering is looking into it and a suggestion that we reconfigure the iPads for less users. That is what we will probably end up doing even though erasing a few thousand iPads in the middle of the school year is less than ideal. They haven't really confirmed anything about how the system/apps/users space is managed or if my theory is right. But they did imply that they will also look at updating the documentation.

[mooler]

Unfortunately it do not work by reducing the max number of user. The problem still arises in an erratic/random way. My solution is to have a really high number of max users (30) on 32Gb devices, it reduces the hands-on fixes I have to do. It's not sustainable but it's the best way to reduce the work load...for now.

[cpominville]

Here is my experience. With the one school board I work my day job, all my iPads (most, some too old) are now on 13.3.1. The Shared iPads were set to 6 users originally on iOS 12. Moving to 13.3.1, all is well. An iPad I reimaged recently, to 13.3.1, with 6 users set as the default, works as it should. I am able to login continually and users get erased as the new ones login.

I said all that to say this, another school board asked me to help them setup Jamf and their iPads, so after hours...... I set their limit to 5 users, why did I not use 6?? Not sure! As soon as the 6th user tried to login, I got that error message about contacting the administrator.....that's me, oh shoot!! now what??

I would be curious to see if one of you re-imaged an iPad and used a default users of 6 in the PreStage enrollment to see if this solves that problem. Let me know. Thanks.