Apple mdm profile manager. How Do I Delete an MDM Profile on Mac
How Do I Delete an MDM Profile on Mac
Do you want to know how to remove an MDM profile from your Mac? How to delete a configuration profile on your MacBook? Learn everything about MDM profiles through the article below. Compatible with OS X 10.7 or later.
Joy Taylor Last Updated: Sep. 21, 2022
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Either you are an Apple user or an organization owner who wishes to configure your Apple devices, MDM is a secure and wireless solution to make it happen. Not only iPhone and iPad but MacBook can also be supervised by MDM. So what to do if you want to remove MDM profile MacBook your Mac?
This term “MDM” may sound unfamiliar to you, but don’t worry! In this article, you will learn: what an MDM profile is, how to find it in your Mac, and how to remove MDM from MacBook if you don’t wish to let it configure your device.
Now let’s go through the topics below!
How Do I Know If My Mac Has MDM?
It’s easy to check whether your Mac has an MDM. Simply go to “System Preferences”. If you don’t see a section as “Profiles” or “Profiles Device Management”, then you don’t have any MDM on your Mac.
On the other hand, click on “Profiles” or “Profiles Device Management”. When it’s open, if you don’t see any profiles listed, then it means you don’t have any MDM profiles or it has been removed. Otherwise, you may have an MDM on your Mac.
Check System Preferences for MDM Profiles
How Do I Remove MDM Profile From My Mac?
Wondering “How do you remove this iPhone is supervised and managed by?” Here are the steps for you to remove MDM profile MacBook:
- Go to “System Preferences”.
- Go to “Profiles” or “Profiles Device Management”.
- Select the MDM profile you want to remove.
- Click on the minus sign to remove it.
- When prompted, click “Remove” to confirm the removal.
MDM Profile on iPhone/iPad
Sometimes, the profile may have been designed by the administrator as unremovable by its users. This feature is often used by organizations for their devices, such as school laptops or work phones. It’s used to prevent device users from removing the configuration profiles and avoiding supervision. In this situation, you may not be able to remove the MDM profile from your Mac using the steps above. Instead, you need to contact the IT department in your organization to consult whether you are allowed to remove the MDM profile and how to do so.
Tips. How to Bypass MDM on Mac without Password
Now you may wonder what if you fail to recall or get the MDM password? Can you still remove the MDM profile on your Mac if you don’t want to be controlled anymore? The answer is YES. How to remove nonremovable profiles on mac terminal? Don’t worry, with AnyUnlock – iPhone Password Unlocker, you can easily bypass MDM lock and force remove MDM profile mac to get back the privilege to control your iOS device. No matter you are restricted by a large enterprise, a small organization, or an educational institution, you can use AnyUnlock to bypass MDM with simple clicks.
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Free installing AnyUnlock – iPhone Password Unlocker on your computer, refer to the following instructions to bypass MDM in minutes!
Step 1. Launch AnyUnlock on your computer Choose the Bypass MDM mode in the middle of the interface.
Step 2. Select the Bypass MDM mode and tap on the Start button.
Choose the Bypass MDM Option
Step 3. Connect your iOS device via a USB cable. You may need to enter the password to unlock the device when connected. Here, tap on the Bypass MDM option.
Click on Bypass MDM button
Step 4. Before removing the MDM lock, ensure your iOS device is on the Remote Management Screen.
Ensure iPhone is on the Remote Management Screen
If your iOS device is not on the “ Remote Management screen ” interface, you should follow the on-screen instructions to put it into “Remote Management” status when resetting the device.
Step 5. When MDM lock screen displays, you can tap on the Bypass Now button to initiate the bypassing progress. After a few minutes, you will see the Successfully Bypassed page when the process completes.
What is MDM Profile for Apple Devices?
MDM stands for “mobile device management”. It includes configuring the settings of your devices, monitoring them for compliance, remotely wiping or locking them, and so on. There are two major types of profiles that are used for MDM on Apple devices: an enrollment profile and configuration profiles.
As its name speaks, an enrollment profile enrolls a certain device with an MDM solution designed for that device. There can be only one enrollment profile with each device. Once a device is enrolled, you can send configuration profiles and commands based on that enrollment profile to your device to manage its settings and monitor it. On the other hand, if you remove an enrollment profile from a device, all configuration profiles, settings, and apps relevant to that profile will be removed from your device as well.
Check if There are MDM Profiles on Mac
Another profile used for MDM is the configuration profile. A configuration profile is an XML file that contains settings, accounts, and so on for your device. Once downloaded and installed, a configuration profile is used to configure your device, such as restricting certain features on it, filling in company credentials automatically, and so on. They can be installed on your device after an enrollment profile enrolls your device to a certain MDM solution. If your MDM solution supports, they can be distributed through email attachments, website links, and built-in portals.
On your Apple device, MDM solutions can be enrolled manually through an enrollment profile or automatically through Apple School Manager or Apple Business Manager.
The Bottom Line
Have you got sufficient information about MDM profiles on your Mac? Please feel free to comment below if you still have any questions about this topic.
Profile Manager gives organizations greater control over their Apple devices, but IT leaders should read these tips before deploying the mobile device management solution.
Mobile device management (MDM) was the first element in what has become enterprise mobility management (EMM), an essential set of capabilities for successful mobile IT operations.
Today, there are dozens of MDM products and services available, but Apple-only organizations have an easy choice in the Apple Profile Manager, an OS X Server tool for iPhones, iPad devices and Macintosh computers that lets IT professionals define a wide range of configuration options for individual devices and users. These configuration profiles can be used to enforce local security policies and measures, feature-usage policies (for the device camera, iCloud and AirDrop) and remote lock or wipe. A user self-service portal even helps minimize the load on operations staff.
While Profile Manager isn’t a full EMM suite, it can provide all the MDM capabilities Apple IT shops need — as long as they follow a few simple rules.
Using the Apple Profile Manager to Keep Operating Systems Up to Date
Some features of Profile Manager aren’t supported on earlier revisions of iOS or Mac OS X. Installing updates as soon as they become available helps eliminate inconsistencies in operations.
Enroll in the Volume Purchase Program (VPP)
Purchasing apps through the VPP can provide significant administrative savings, and because Profile Manager supports managed distribution to either users or devices, IT professionals don’t have to manually assign, revoke or reassign software and content licenses.
Understand Security Limitations
Beyond conducting a detailed review of Profile Manager’s security capabilities, IT professionals should start with a limited trial deployment to ensure operations are as intended and security remains in concert with organizational objectives.
How to resolve three common problems that affect the Profile Manager service
Jesus Vigo reviews three common issues that affect the Profile Manger service found in OS X Server and provides solutions to get the service online and communicating again.
In keeping with the spirit of recent troubleshooting articles, I’ve decided to extend it to OS X Server-related issues as well. And one of the most highly used services is OS X Server’s Profile Manager for managing iOS and OS X devices and their respective settings.
Profile Manager is a service that helps to provide standardization for the computers used in an enterprise. It helps establish a baseline for standardization and also doubles as a MDM suite for deploying software to mobile devices over a LAN or WAN.
While generally solid and well designed, like many of Apple’s products, Profile Manager does have its moments. Some of the more symptomatic issues that affect Profile Manager services at one time or another are covered below, along with some helpful solutions on how to bounce back from these setbacks.
Administration page does not open or default Apple OS X Server services page opens
Symptoms: Attempting to access the Profile Manager administration website does not load the page or loads the default Apple OS X Server services page instead.
Causes: OS X Server utilizes the built-in web services from within the same directory. If using more than one web service, such as Profile Manager and Wiki server, there does exist the potential that one page will open when referencing the other (for example, launching the Profile Manager page loads the Wiki server page).
This is typically caused by some form of data corruption in the database storing the information for the individual pages, sometimes even resulting in the default services web page loading with none of the links to the individual service pages working quite right.
Solution: A problem such as this one has several possible steps, due to the number of variables involved — plus you wouldn’t want to fix one service only to kill another, so caution must be taken always.
The first solution is to verify that any addresses used to access the Profile Manager service are entered correctly. Remember that Profile Manager uses SSL for encryption, so accessing the page requires https://. Also, if any port numbers are assigned to the site, be sure to include those as well, since the service may not respond otherwise.
If the addresses check out, the next step — and typically the largest cause of connectivity issues — is to check DNS., which is required to resolve hostnames to IP addresses. Without this service running properly, chances are slim to none that any of the OS X Server-based services will be accessible anywhere, and this goes doubly for Profile Manager.
A final step to remediate the problem is to check the profilemanager.log file located at /Library/Logs/ProfileManager, as errors relating to the administration page specifically are written to this log and may shed some light on any trouble(s) preventing the page from loading properly.
Can’t deploy apps or push settings to enrolled devices
Symptoms: OS X and/or iOS devices enrolled in Profile Manager do not receive configured apps or settings.
Causes: There are also a few reasons for clients not receiving pushed profiles — most notably that the devices are not enrolled in Profile Manager properly. Additional issues may arise from OS X Server, OS X, iOS client devices, or Apple’s Push Notification Server (APNS) themselves.
Solution: By far the easiest solution to check is the enrollment status. All client devices must enroll via Profile Manager’s Device Management portal. Particularly, two profiles must be installed in a specific order. First, the Trust profile, which allows the client device to accept management settings from PM. Second, the Enrollment profile must be installed, which enrolls the device for management by that specific PM server. Once installation of the profiles is completed, enrollment may be confirmed by logging onto the administration page and viewing the list of devices.
In the event that profiles are installed but the devices are still not appearing within the Profile Manager database, there may possibly be an issue communicating in either direction with APNS. To confirm this, launch Terminal from your OS X client machine and enter the following commands individually, pressing [Enter] after each line:
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.Apple.apsd APSWriteLogs.bool TRUE
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.Apple.apsd APSLogLevel.int 7
The commands will enable APNS debug logging, which will detect any communication issues between the APNS and the client device. Logging information may be reviewed by accessing the Console (/Applications/Utilities/Console.app), and it will help you identify any trouble, particularly with network ports that may be unblocked from your network’s firewall.
Migration error or reset back to default state
Symptoms: Profile Manager database is corrupt, data is not correct, or it failed to update.
Causes: While this may sometimes occur even with a clean or first-time install, it’s more commonly found when upgrading from one version of OS X Server to another, as data can become corrupt during the process.
Solution: Unfortunately, the best (and perhaps only real) solution is to have created a backup prior to making any changes or upgrades on production equipment — especially servers. If a backup of the database exists, the simplest solution to this issue is to reset the database by issuing the command below.
To reset the Profile Manager database, enter the following command into Terminal on the affected OS X Server:
Once the data has been cleared, Profile Manager’s data will be reset back to its default state, and any data that was backed up previously may be imported and remigrated, creating a new database container.
If resetting Profile Manager data didn’t resolve the issue, you can try resetting Profile Manager and clearing out all data associated with Profile Manager on the server.
To reset Profile Manager and clear out all data associated with Profile Manager on the server, enter the following commands into Terminal:
sudo serveradmin stop devicemgr
sudo serverctl disable service=com.Apple.DeviceManagement.devicemgrd
sudo serverctl disable service=com.Apple.DeviceManagement.postgres
sudo mv /Library/Server/ProfileManager/Config/ServiceData/Data/PostgreSQL ~/.Trash
sudo mv /Library/Server/ProfileManager/Config/ServiceData/Data/backup ~/.Trash
Each command should be executed once and in succession in order to carry out the process of purging all existing Profile Manager data and resetting the service completely. After this has been done, launch Server.app, click on the Profile Manager pane, and the Profile Manager service will be turned off. Turn it back on and configure as needed to restart the service, and this will hopefully clear up any previous issues affecting Profile Manager from working properly.
This is not an exhaustive list of issues or solutions to Profile Manager-related issues, but it is a sampling of some pretty bothersome and common issues that can occur at any particular time due to a variety of reasons. What other problems and solution have you discovered when working with Profile Manager? Share your experience in the discussion thread below.
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Remove an enrollment profile directly from a device
If you manually remove the enrollment profile directly from a device, it is not communicated to the N-sight RMM Dashboard and the device reports as active until it is deleted using the N-sight RMM Dashboard.
Remove an enrollment profile from macOS computers
To perform a clean enrollment profile removal on macOS computers running Device Management for Apple. we recommend you first uninstall the Mac Agent and then delete the enrollment profile from the device. For more information, see Uninstall the Mac Agent.
If you remove the enrollment profile from a device that is still running the Mac Agent and Device Management for Apple has the Enrollment Helper enabled, the end user is prompted to enroll again.
To remove an enrollment profile from a macOS computer, you have the following options:
Use System Preferences to remove an enrollment profile
- On the macOS computer, click the Apple menu icon then go to System Preferences Profiles The Profiles option is not available until there is at least one profile installed on the computer.
- Select your enrollment Profile
- Click the minus icon at the bottom of the dialog to begin the removal process
- Click Remove, if prompted to confirm removal
Deleting the enrollment profile deletes all configuration profiles on the device.
Use Terminal (Command Line) to remove a specific enrollment profile
- On the macOS computer, click Finder Go Utilities
- Double-click Terminal
- To display a list of installed profiles, run the following command either as root or by assuming root privileges by sudo, entering the admin user’s password when prompted: sudo profiles listPassword: Example output: _computerlevel[1] attribute: profileIdentifier: com.example.mav.tcc_computerlevel[2] attribute: profileIdentifier: com.example.takecontrol.tcc_computerlevel[3] attribute: profileIdentifier: com.example.rmmagent.tccThere are 3 system configuration profiles installed
- Run the following command with the name of the profile you want to remove: sudo profiles remove.identifier Example command: sudo profiles remove.identifier com.example.mav.tcc Depending on its settings, a profile may be unremovable using Terminal. In that situation, you must use the N-sight RMM Dashboard to remove the profile. For information, see Remove configuration profiles from devices.
Use Terminal (Command Line) to remove all enrollment profiles
- On the macOS computer, click Finder Go Utilities
- Double-click Terminal
- Run the profiles remove.all command either as root or by assuming root privileges by sudo, entering the admin user’s password when prompted:
- sudo /usr/bin/profiles remove.allPassword:
Remove an enrollment profile from iOS devices (iPhones, iPads)
When you Delete a mobile device from the Dashboard, the enrollment profile is removed. However, you can manually remove an enrollment profile from an iOS device if required.
You can use this task to remove an enrollment profile from an Apple TV. Exact menu names may differ. For example, VPN Device Management may be simply Device Management.
To remove an enrollment profile from an iOS device:
- On the iOS device, go to Settings General Profiles Device Management (for iOS 16 go to Settings General VPN Device Management)
- Select your mobile device management profile
- Click Remove Management or Remove Profile
- Authorize the removal
- Confirm removal when prompted
