Prevent students from setting a passcodeSolved

Noted on this. We’re also planning to roll out fresh ipads for the senior high school students pretty soon. What’s the best practice to set this up? Is there a way to prevent the passcode prompt from showing up when the devices are turned on initially in the first place?

Yes! It is possible to prevent the passcode prompt from showing up in the Setup Assistant pane when an iOS/iPadOS device starts up for the first time. To achieve this, you’d need to enroll the device using any of the below enrollment methods:

• Apple Configurator Enrollment
• ABM/ASM Enrollment
• ABM/ASM Enrollment via Apple Configurator

For the cases of Apple Configurator Enrollment and ABM/ASM Enrollment via Apple Configurator, the Passcode option can be unchecked in the iOS Setup Assistant step while preparing the device in Apple Configurator. In the case of ABM/ASM Enrollment, you can associate a DEP configuration profile with the Passcode option unchecked.

If you enroll your iPads via ABM/ASM enrollment or ABM/ASM Enrollment via Apple Configurator, you can add the devices as pre-approved while configuring the DEP account. You can then create a dynamic device group with the pre-approved devices (choose condition filters: Device info > Enrollment status > Is > Pre-approved) and then associate a policy with the Modify passcode restriction enabled. That way, the policy will automatically take effect when the students start up their devices initially.

As for Apple Configurator Enrollment, you can set up the Modify passcode restriction while creating a configuration profile in Apple Configurator. Or, you can configure and associate a policy (as mentioned above) from the Hexnode portal after the enrollment process before handing out the iPads to the students.

Hope this helps.

Have a great day!
Chris Wheeler
Hexnode UEM