Theoretical iOS Bluetooth question

[blackholemac]

Does Apple allow MDM vendors to collect whether Bluetooth is enabled on a given, supervised iOS device. I'm wanting to take advantage of the new ability to disallow users to toggle Bluetooth on their device but don't wish to lock Bluetooth in the off position by enabling such a restriction for everyone.

If Apple did allow MDM vendors to capture that info, I could see creating a smart group locking that down once users turned Bluetooth on but waiting until they did so I don't lock it down in the "Bluetooth off" position.

I am asking this to help the new Apple Classroom to work better.

[michael_devins]

Great question @blackholemac. We do not currently have any visibility into the current status of Bluetooth on a device.

The ideal workflow would likely be to apply the new Bluetooth restriction immediately upon a new device set up since Bluetooth is set on by default with a new device. Ultimately, I'd recommend filing a feature request with Apple to enable Bluetooth to be managed via MDM to truly fulfill your request.

[blackholemac]

@michael.devins agreed on both fronts.

Two thoughts on your post. Had I had iOS 10 at the beginning of the school year here, this would've gotten applied on day one. Too late for this year. I will do that next year.

The second thought is that Apple is very unlikely to allow the setting to be forced on. They won't let me force an auto-lock policy to 15 min...they merely will allow me to set 15 min auto-lock as the maximum. The let us set the max and the end user set the actual.

Now we shift that to the Bluetooth world...some admins want to actually lock Bluetooth off because it interferes with 2.4 GHz band. Mine did 2 years ago. Since we revamped our wifi that isn't relevant anymore.

Apple offering to merely lock down whatever is said is a step in the right direction. If I can get the status of however that setting is set I can create a smart group and scope mobileconfigs accordingly. but in short this goes away for us next year as I will lock Bluetooth on out of the gate.

[michael_devins]

Great background and context about your deployment - makes a ton of sense. And I agree with your assessment that there are two distinct feature requests we are talking about here:
1. Monitor Bluetooth Status
2. Enforce Bluetooth Status

While I think that both are valid requests, I do agree that one seems more likely to be implemented than the other. Either way, I do think it's important that any impacted customers make the appropriate feature requests with Apple to help inform their development priorities.

[bentoms]

In iOS10, you can disable folks changing Bluetooth settings.

Problem is, it's not an ON button.

So push the restriction, & if Bluetooth is off when the profile hits. It cannot be re-enabled. :(

I'm guessing this might be something that works when pushed as a part of a prestage enrollment.

[cdenesha]

I finally did my iOS 10 BT testing. If enabled when BT is on, it blocks ALL changes on that pane in Settings. This includes Pairing to new devices, and Connecting to paired ones if they aren't smart enough to reconnect automatically. Just something to be aware of if your users need BT keyboards or speakers they need/want to use.

[llloyd]

Hey @cdenesha -
We just found that problem here as well that we can't connect to our bluetooth makerspace items with this enabled. Wonder if we would ever have the ability to have it on, but still be able to connect to other devices? GAH.

[chrisandrews]

Apple really need to implement the force Bluetooth On option otherwise students can make themselves unmanageable from and Apple Classroom point of view. This breaks one of their best touted features of Apple School Manager!

[cdenesha]

Yes, we've asked Apple for this for a LONG time but as-implemented it is worthless. We need to be able to pair to new items still!

So in real life, we are 'stuck' with Classroom Management for those problem students. Perhaps that is best.

[fsjjeff]

Just discovered this as well, and got to say I'm getting so incredibly frustrated with Configuration Profiles – it's like Apple dribbles out Profile functionality in a completely random and often unusable manner, of which this is just the latest example. I'm really starting to wish we'd just gone with Chromebooks like sensible people, and this is from someone who has been a huge Apple cheerleader for more than 20 years :(.