Mac stuck on "waiting on management server"Solved

Participant
Discussion
4 months ago Jan 15, 2026

Hey everyone, I’m tearing my hair out trying to get a new MacBook enrolled. 

The user is stuck at the Remote management screen, and it just hangs endlessly on “waiting on management server…” 

I checked Apple Business Manager, and the device is definitely in there. Our Default Ade profile was pushed to it back on May 5th. I went into the Hexnode portal and ran a manual ADE sync yesterday (May 11th) and it said it succeeded. 

Despite all this, the Mac just refuses to get past that loading screen. What am I missing here? Is this an Apple server issue or a hexnode issue? 

Replies (1)

Marked SolutionPending Review
Participant
4 months ago Jan 17, 2026
Marked SolutionPending Review

Hey @reggie,

Don’t worry, this is a fairly common glitch where the device’s ADE token gets slightly out of sync between Apple’s servers and the Mdm, even if the portal says the sync was successful.

To clear the bottleneck, you basically need to refresh the assignment status and force the Mac to fetch a new enrollment profile. Here is the exact workflow to fix it:

Step 1: Reassign in ABM 

  1. Log into your ABM account.
  2. Find the specific Mac by its Serial number.
  3. Edit the MDM server assignment: Unassign it from your Hexnode MDM server completely.
  4. Save it, wait a few seconds, and then Reassign it back to your Hexnode MDM server.

Step 2: Sync in Hexnode 

  1. Go back to your Hexnode portal and navigate to Admin > Apple Business Manager > ADE.
  2. Click on Sync to pull the fresh assignment data from Apple.
  3. Check the ADE devices list and verify that the status for this specific Mac has changed back to Assigned.

Step 3: Force the Mac to Renew  

Since the Mac is currently hung up, you need to force it to drop the bad connection and request the new profile.

  1. If the user managed to bypass the screen and get to the local desktop, or if you can access Terminal, have them run this command: sudo profiles renew -type enrollment
  2. Restart the Mac.
  3. Proceed through the Setup assistant again.

It should immediately grab the fresh profile and fly right past the “waiting on management server” screen. Let us know if that clears it up!

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