Wallpaper reset after Focus loophole resolved

[Kellibrarian]

My district uses Jamf School to manage iPads.  We set wallpapers for each school and prevent students from changing the wallpaper.  Students found a couple of loopholes in iPadOS 17 that allowed them to change the wallpaper (via Focus and by setting a picture from the Photos app as background).  These loopholes are resolved, but some of the iPads still have the wallpaper students set.  The wallpaper hasn't reset to the assigned wallpaper after checking in or after reinstalling the profile that sets the wallpaper.  For some iPads we've tested, we can only get the wallpaper to reset after erasing the device. We can continue to erase iPads as needed to correct this (most could probably benefit from this anyway), but is there another solution we could try to force the wallpaper back to the assigned wallpaper?  

[GregBobbett · Accepted solution]

This is only an off the cuff suggestion, but what if you replaced the wallpaper graphic. Even uploading the same one with a slightly different name?

Another idea, when you say 'reinstall' did you disable it in the Inventory > device details > Managed Profiles > disable? Or did you remove the device from the device group that is applying the profile?

If any of these suggestions work, let us know.

[Kellibrarian]

Great ideas! Replacing the wallpaper graphic has helped some of the iPads.  It seems to have forced them to acknowledge a change and update.  

When I was reinstalling the profile, I was going to Inventory > device details > managed profiles > reinstall.  I had some success with that, but it wasn't consistent.  I haven't tried disabling the profile, but based on your suggestion I tried something similar.  We scope devices by name to add them to groups and apply profiles with school-based wallpapers.  Renaming an iPad to make it part of a different device group/profile has help some of them with the wallpaper issue.  It changes to the other school, and once I see the activity has completed, I can change it back to the correct school with the correct wallpaper.  

The ones not updating the wallpaper at this point seem to have other issues like apps not updating or failing, so it's probably not just the wallpaper issue. There's probably something else at fault. We occasionally find iPads that just stop communicating with Jamf or Apple Classroom for no known reason, and erasing/resetting them is just the fastest fix.    

Thanks so much for your suggestions. They seem to be working and giving me more tricks to try before having to resort to erasing.    

[nanfay]

Good afternoon, not sure if you are still having issues with the iPads that occasionally stop communicating with Jamf. We use Jamf Pro, not Jamf School, but I have a case that has been open since mid-November where following the command to set the wallpaper, some iPads, but not all, will stop processing additional MDM commands from Jamf. We did find in our instance that a power cycle of the iPad restored normal communication between iPad and Jamf. Today, after almost 2 months of looking into this, it was passed along that my issues seem to be related to ones that the Jamf School support team is hearing about across multiple schools. I also have an open case with Apple, and they are working closely with Jamf support. Hopefully they get it figured out soon - we have not had to erase iPads to resolve the problem, but even just the need to restart them is tedious.  

[GregBobbett]

Awesome! Glad to have helped!