Have you even wondered how do establishments lock down their iPad’s so it only uses their application or website? Well with iPad there is a kiosk mode where you can lock-down the device to just use a single app and basically disable all physical buttons. It is not hard as you think you just need one tool called the Apple Configurator 2.
Once you installed it you are good to go, regardless you have one or many iPads it’s really easy.
Now open the application, it’s the purple iPad icon. You can connect your iPads via USB at this stage as well.
Once the application opens, you will see all of your iPads connected to your Mac.
Select all iPads that you want to configure. Then go to Actions -> Advanced -> then Start Single App Mode. What this does is that it restricts the iPad to only run one app of your choice.
Window will appear, this is where you will choose the single app you want your iPads to run. But before we do that lets click Options.
From here you can disable all iPad features like physical buttons, voice, audio, rotation etc. For this instance we just checked Touch as it is used for browsing through our site. Click Apply.
Look and select Safari
Now your iPads are in Single App mode. Now lets place a restriction on what sites Safari can open and for this we need to create a blueprint so we can store it and easily push the policy on the iPad using profiles.
Go to File -> New Blueprint
Name your Blueprint
Choose iPads only, since we are using only iPads
Go to File -> New Profile to create a new Profile to be attached to this blueprint.
Now go to Content Filter then click Configure
Choose Built-in: Specific Websites Only
Add the URLS that are allowed, click on the + icon
Type the URL, if you want to put it in bookmarks add a name otherwise leave it.
Go to File -> Save.
Give it a name, then click Save.
Now attach that newly created profile to the blueprint. Click on the green + icon, then choose Profiles.
Select the one you saved earlier. Then click Add
Now the profile is attached on the blueprint
All you need to do is apply it. Choose the iPads where you want to apply them. Select Actions -> Apply -> Then your Blueprint.
Thats it! Congratulations your iPad is in kiosk mode now.
To revert it Single app mode, it’s the same step as putting them into Single App Mode. Select all iPads that you want to configure. Then go to Actions -> Advanced -> then Stop Single App Mode.