Preventing the deletion of history for Chrome app on iOS?

[JamesG]

With the help of support we did find out how to prevent students from deleting history with Safari.

It is in the profile under Web Content Filter and then "Enable web content filter" and "Enable Automatic Filtering". This successfully removed the option to delete history in the Safari app, and also removed the ability for the student to do private browsing.

We also need to see if this is possible in Chrome. We have contacted Google support but without much luck so far. Has anyone gotten a profile payload to work with Chrome that might accomplish something similar?

[Fluffy]

Google's support documentation seems to leave out some information in a couple of places, but it looks like there is a solution using the admin console. Here they say you can manage user profiles for desktop operating systems and omit any iOS or Android. But then here there is a page for managing user profiles on iOS.

Either way, there is a list of policies you can set here. One of which is Clear browser history: "Specifies whether users can clear browser data, including their browsing and download history."

[jonnes86]

I am still looking for an answer to this. I know this is possible in nearly every other OS (per Google Documentation ).

I attempted to use the same key in an iOS payload:

   <key>AllowDeletingBrowserHistory</key>
   <boolean>false</boolean>

But in my experience, it was not successful.

I feel like this is likely possible because I encountered a similar issue (lack of documentation and guidance or readily available information) for disabling Incognito Mode in iOS, which I was able to do successfully. 

Please post any updates if you have solved this issue, as I am still actively searching.

[Kristopher]

Not possible on iOS.  It's listed in the admin console as not available for iOS

[jpray]

How did you disable incognito mode in chrome on an iPad?

[jonnes86]

Tested this with iOS15 and it works beautifully

1. Deploy Google Chrome via Jamf Pro

2. Paste the contents below into the "App Configuration" tab in Jamf Pro

<dict>
<key>DeveloperToolsAvailability</key>
<integer>2</integer>
<key>IncognitoModeAvailability</key>
<integer>1</integer>
</dict>

3. Wait for Google Chrome to deploy or for the App Configuration to install (there will be a pending command if we just added the App Configuration). The Incognito window will now be disabled.

[jpray]

Thank you. Did you ever figure out how to block clear browsing history? 

[Kristopher]

Is this for history or incognito?

[jpray]

I got the incognito to work based off of what you said before. Just seeing if you figured out how to block students from clearning thier history in chrome? 

[jonnes86]

I never did figure it out. Officially it isn't supported.