Webfilter broken in iOS 16.4.1?

[Sebastian0000]

Hello,

can someone confirm that the "web content filter" is broken in IOS 16.4.1?

Only Blacklist seems to work.

(My testing device worked fine on iOS 16.x before the update)

Edit: Device = iPad 8. Gen 128G/Wifi/cell

thanks,
-Sebastian

[dmccluskey · Accepted solution]

It is broken starting with 16.4

I have apple ticket 101966584279

when you open your ticket you can mention mine.

[R_V_D]

Yeah, same problem here on 300 devices with iOS 16.4.1

Have you already got an solution or do we have to wait till 16.4.2 or 16.5 ?

[dmccluskey]

Yes, apple will not be "fixing" anything.

16.4 was the "fix" to incorrect web filters.

you have to cut back on your web filter url.

also apple admitted to not documenting this change, it was an internal change.🤕

Example. 

If your web filter is apple.com/page1/login

it now needs to be apple.com

[CalebS]

Was this something you heard from Apple specifically? Because even 'simple' URLs as you listed as an example, are having issues. And it seems to be limited to only certain sites, sites that tend to use numerous other URLs as according to their whitelist specifications.

[mml7]

This is actually the opposite of what we had to do.  Our filter was, https://www.example.com and we had to add https://www.example.com/public/ to get it to work.  We also have a case open with Apple.

This change also impacts apps that make web calls in the app, so we also had to use Charles Proxy to figure out where certain apps were trying to go to get them to work.

[dmccluskey]

Yes

apple ticket 101966584279

Apple made a change and didn't mention it any release notes.

The best thing you can do is open a ticket with apple, you can mention mine.

[CalebS]

Well thats incredibly frustrating. Do you have any idea how I would be able to work around this? Our teachers are having difficulty using Accelerated Reader, Prodigy, and Waterford after this change. I've added all the necessary whitelists and variations of them just in case. Really need this fixed as those are the main three applications they use (thanks Apple...)

[mmcclellan]

Has anyone found a solution to this yet? Or has anybody heard back from Apple? I am still having this same issue on iPadOS 16.5 too! For now I am still using the "deny list" setting which makes you manually enter in each website you DON'T want the devices to access. Which is impossible to manage. 

[TF]

No official fix that I'm aware of.  I've been creating a new profile through iMazing adding the urls then uploading the new config to Jamf.  The issue I have is that it's very tedious... Every time someone needs a new website whitelisted I have to create a new profile, upload it, push to devices, wait for all devices to adopt, then remove the old profile before they can access the new whitelisted url.  It now takes days to make a single change...