Kandji Boosts iOS, iPadOS Support with Home Screen Layout

As an Apple admin, there are times you need to manage the Home Screen on your organization’s iOS and iPadOS devices. Perhaps you deploy iPad as a kiosk in retail stores or as a dedicated controller in meeting rooms. Or maybe you have iPhone devices that multiple users share, and you want to be sure they all have a consistent UI, so no matter which device a user picks up, they’ll know which apps are where. 

A new Kandji Library Item makes Home Screen management way, way easier. And it’s just the latest in a catalog of iOS capabilities that make Kandji an effective tool for managing mobile fleets, allowing Apple admins to automate the deployment, management, and security of iOS and iPadOS devices at scale. 

Home Screen Layout Library Item

Whatever your reason for wanting to manage the Home Screen, our new Home Screen Layout Library Item can make it happen. In that Library Item, you can select and arrange the apps you want to appear on the Home Screen of the selected device family, either iPad or iPhone. Those apps can include both apps you licensed from the App Store as well as the built-in apps that come on all of Apple’s mobile devices. 

As you add and arrange items, you’ll see a device-specific preview, so you know what the actual Home Screens will look like. Add that Library Item to a Blueprint that includes the devices you want to manage, and their Home Screens will rearrange themselves to your specifications.

You’ve been able to arrange the Home Screen before with Kandji, but it was tricky: You had to deploy a Custom Profile, which in turn had to be built using third-party tools to define a layout in XML inside a .mobileconfig file. You also had to add a Restrictions Library Item to restrict the apps that would be allowed on the device. Our new Library Item makes all of that unnecessary and accomplishes the same thing with just some dragging and dropping.

In conjunction with our recently introduced Wallpaper Library Item (which lets you define the wallpaper that will appear on each device), the Home Screen Layout Library Item gives you control over what your organization’s mobile devices look like, reinforcing your branding and making it easier for end users.

In Preview

The Home Screen Layout Library Item will launch with a “Preview” flag on it. This merely means that we will be iterating on it rapidly, adding more functionality in the months to come and that we’re eager for customer feedback. But it’s fully functional as described above right now.

Kandji and iOS/iPadOS

These two Library Items are just the latest in our catalog of iOS/iPadOS capabilities. We also offer:

• Managed OS, which lets you ensure every iPhone and iPad has the latest version of their OS.
• Return to Service, for resetting mobile devices and readying them for new users.
• Lost Mode, so you can locate mobile Apple devices when they’re lost or stolen without compromising user privacy.
• Managed Data Flow, to control how app data is shared between managed (or unmanaged) sources and destinations.
• Device naming, which allows you to apply consistent naming formulae to devices at scale, easing interoperability with other elements of your tech stack.
• Passcode enforcement, so you can be sure users are applying sufficiently secure passcodes for your devices.
• Configure VPNs and Wi-Fi access, to make sure mobile devices can safely connect to the network resources they need.

These features are essential capabilities for any serious solution for managing iPhone and iPad. But the real key is that Kandji makes them so easy to implement: In many cases, it’s a question of checking a box or two—that’s it. Admins don’t need any kind of certification or advanced training to do it. That ease of use saves IT admins time, which they can then spend on more strategic priorities.

About Kandji

Kandji is the Apple device management and security platform that empowers secure and productive global work. With Kandji, Apple devices transform themselves into enterprise-ready endpoints, with all the right apps, settings, and security systems in place. Through advanced automation and thoughtful experiences, we’re bringing much-needed harmony to the way IT, InfoSec, and Apple device users work today and tomorrow.