posts/Managing-Family-Devices-Jamf-Now/

[giscus[bot]]

posts/Managing-Family-Devices-Jamf-Now/

How I keep my kids safe, apps up-to-date, and sanity intact by effortlessly manage every iPhone, iPad, and Mac in my home with Jamf Now.

https://tonyyo11.github.io/posts/Managing-Family-Devices-Jamf-Now/

[waltersbri]

Hi Tony,

Thank you for this post. I’m in the process of doing the same thing this weekend. I’ve been in tech for 30 years, but I’ve never gone this far into the internals of macOS. I spent yesterday attempting to do plists by hand and quickly realized there had to be a better way.

In my case, my elderly father-in-law lives with us, and I need to set up his iMac so he can use it safely. At his age, it’s a similar situation to what you described with your kids, he’s lost the ability to recognize dangerous clickbait, but keeping him off the web entirely isn’t an option. He also tends to click around in system settings and then forget what he changed.

Your blog speaks to a niche I suspect is bigger than Apple realizes. And it extends to kids and elderly users.

One question as I start down this path: Do I actually need to erase and wipe the iMac to enroll it in Jamf Now for full management? Is that really the only way to get complete control?

I appreciate the effort you put into this write-up. This blog is gold.

Brian

[tonyyo11]

Brian, glad you were able to get something from the blog post!

And to answer your question - for macOS, no you do not need to wipe at all! You’d just open a browser and go to your dedicated enrollment URL.
Just make sure you set Jamf Now up in advance to deploy Jamf Protect and add any restrictions you may need. As well as any additional customized configuration profiles.

Only iOS device that you want the web protection enabled require wiping and going through Apple Configurator in order to be “supervised”. But macOS is supervised automatically.

Good luck sir, and thank you for being willing to help out your family to keep them as safe as you possibly can on the web!

[reacuna]

Hi Tony,
Thanks for the post. I've been managing my family's devices using Jamf Now for several years now, but I've never enabled the 'supervised' mode for any device - looking at the documentation, it seems like I need either an Apple Business Manager or an Apple School Manager account. I haven't experimented with any of these - changes required appear not to be undoable.

Can you add more details on how to get the devices 'supervised'? You mention it in the "Cons" list, but if you have more information I'd appreciate it.

Thanks!