Can I disable bluetooth on my ios devices in Meraki SM?

[DanHarmon]

Our enterprise has absolutely no need for Bluetooth on the 30 ipads we just bought.  I'd like to be able to turn them off and leave them off.  Besides security reasoning, it'd also keep them charged longer.  Is there a way in Meraki SM to turn it off and then keep it off?

[sshort · Accepted solution]

Apple doesn't provide an official MDM solution to disable bluetooth, but if you don't have too many iPads to configure there is a workaround. You have to manually disable bluetooth on each device, then you can create a restriction profile that prevents the user from re-enabling Bluetooth.

If you create a new profile and select the Restrictions option you can uncheck the box for "Allow modification of Bluetooth settings" and push that out to your devices.

[sshort]

@DanHarmon If your iPads are enrolled with DEP Apple will release an official iOS Bluetooth profile in the upcoming iOS 11.3

[DanHarmon]

They aren't enrolled in DEP...I can't figure out how to do it.  I mean, I have a DEP account but when I try to add them, Apple says "Screw you."  At least, that's how I read their words. 🙂

[Melissa]

@DanHarmon - if you can't work with Apple to get those added to your DEP on the backend, there is always the option of manually enrolling the ipads in DEP using Apple Configurator 2 (as long as they are running at least iOS 11)

More on that here https://documentation.meraki.com/SM/Device_Enrollment/Enrolling_and_Supervising_iOS_Devices_using_Ap...

[DanHarmon]

It turns out I just had to nag my vendor to get Apple to add them to my account.  Then I had to manually type in all the serial numbers because you cannot get a Meraki device report that includes S/N.  But, as far as DEP is concerned, I'm good now, thanks!

I haven't touched the Bluetooth thing yet, but hopefully soon.

[Melissa]

@DanHarmon - also - for Supervised devices we just released the ability to disable or enable bluetooth on iOS. 

This can be done on an individual device (from that device's page in SM) like below

Some folks in the Community have already noticed this new feature in dashboard!! We'll be making a larger announcement about this and other upcoming features soon 🙂

[vassallon]

While this is a great feature, students still have the ability to turn off Bluetooth for 24 hours through the control center which is frustrating. I have already opened a case with Apple to get that fixed in the future, as I don't want to take away to Control Center just to stop Bluetooth changes.