Get started with a supervised iPhone or iPad
If your employer or educational institution issues you with an iPhone or iPad, it may be supervised. Find out what it means to use a supervised device, what the owner can see and how to tell if your iPhone or iPad is being supervised.
This article is intended for people who are using a supervised iPhone or iPad issued by their employer or educational institution. If you’re an administrator and want to set up supervision, use Apple Business Manager, Apple School Manager or Apple Configurator to set up your devices.
Supervision gives educational institutions and businesses greater control over the devices that they own. With supervision, your administrator can apply extra restrictions, such as turning off AirDrop or preventing access to the App Store. It also provides additional device configurations and features, such as silently updating apps or filtering web usage.
By default, your iPhone or iPad isn’t supervised. Supervision can only be turned on when setting up a new device. If your iPhone or iPad isn’t currently supervised, your administrator will need to completely erase your device to set up supervision.
Find out if your iPhone or iPad is supervised
You can find out if your iPhone or iPad is supervised by looking at the settings on your device. The Supervision message will be displayed at the top of the main Settings page.
Your organisation also has the option to display a custom ownership message on the Lock Screen by using the Shared Device Configuration profile payload.
Find out what your administrator is supervising
If your iPhone or iPad is supervised, the organisation that owns your device has the ability to install a profile to control what features your device has access to.
If you want to see what features your administrator has modified from the default settings, you’ll need to check your settings.
Tap Settings > General > VPN & Device Management. If there is a profile installed, tap it to see what kind of changes have been made.
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To find out more about the features that have been changed for your specific organisation, ask your administrator whether these settings have been enforced.
If your administrator is monitoring your location
You may see a message in your settings informing you that your employer or school can monitor your internet traffic and locate your device. The only time your administrator can view the location of your iPhone or iPad is when they’ve put your device into Managed Lost Mode.
When this mode is turned on, it reveals the location of the device to the administrator. If your administrator puts your device into Managed Lost Mode, your device will be locked and you’ll see a message on the Lock Screen. Your organisation can’t track the location of the device without locking it and displaying a notification.
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