I have two pre-teen children who would like to do the following things with an iOS device:
- Control Sonos speakers
- Spotify
- iMessage
However, we don't want to sit behind them and supervise every moment of their tablet usage so we need a tablet that can't add apps from the app store and does not have a general purpose web browser capable of seeing any site on the Internet.
At first, "Guided Access" seems like a good solution. However, it is trivially easy to break out of guided access and gain access to Safari, etc. My children will most certainly, and quickly, figure this out.
"Single App Mode" is robust, and can't be broken out of, and behaves just like what we need – but it is, literally, single app mode. You can't have sonos and spotify and imessage available – you can only pick one.
So I am at a loss …
Assuming that I have smart kids that can look up things on their school computers and figure out how to break out of the jail and assuming that I would like an iOS device that has only a limited set of apps and no ability to add new ones, what is a good strategy ?
Is it possible to remove apps (like Safari) from an iOS device, then lock down the app store, and make it impossible to add new ones ? In this instance, they could still factory reset the entire thing and get a fresh iOS device with Safari and Internet access, correct ?
Open to any suggestions …
Best Answer
You can use "Apple Configurator 2" from the App Store to supervise the device. Note that supervising the iOS device will wipe its current content.
When you have supervised the device, you can setup restrictions such as for example disabling the Safari web browser, disabling app installation from the App Store, etc.
Another approach might be to make an agreement with your children so that they know what they're allowed and not allowed to do, and then trust them to not install other apps. If they do, you can have a productive conversation on that topic - perhaps they can convince you that the new app is actually a benefit to them...