Wifi Connection in Guided access mode.

Hi,

I am developing an iPad application which will run in guided access mode. This will be an Enterprise app. the use case is we will provide iPad to our customers with the application installed in it and guided access mode is on and wi-fi is also on. Now I want users to connect to their own wifi setup at their home (SSID name and password as input field within the app)

So is there any way user can connect to their wifi from within the application entering SSID and password in Guided access mode ?

Or is there is any way user can scan the wifi at their home and connect to on of them by providing password from inside the application. Application will run in Guided access mode only.

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Guided Access does not allow access to the Control Center or Settings, so there's no way for a user to use a device in Guided Access and also manually configure Wi-Fi.

Also it is not possible for an app to configure Wi-Fi.

However another arrangement may solve your problem if the device is also enrolled in MDM. The app presents its own UI for the user to configure Wi-Fi. The app communicates this to the MDM server, which constructs a configuration profile containing a Wi-Fi payload, then installs that profile on the device automatically. A significant downside of this is that this exposes the Wi-Fi credentials to the MDM server.

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Systems Engineer
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Thank you for the reply.

But initially the iPad is not connected to User's wifi or any kind of network. So is it possible to connect with MDM server for profile configuration so that user can connect to their own wi-fi ?

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Tarun9573
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  • Yeah, there's a kind of chicken-and-egg problem there. The configuration would have to be done at a time when the device has access to the MDM server: connected to a different Wi-Fi network, using cellular data, or using Internet Sharing when connected to a Mac. But if your devices are arriving in the customer's hands with no network at all and locked into Guided Access Mode, configuring Wi-Fi won't work.

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    Systems Engineer
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Another option to consider is Autonomous Single App Mode (ASAM). This allows an app designated by the MDM server to enable and disable Guided Access Mode. You could provide the devices to customers with Guided Access enabled. The user tells the app they need to configure Wi-Fi, the app temporarily disables Guided Access so the users can perform the configuration in Settings, and once it's configured they return to the app which then re-enables Guided Access. During that time you'd be trusting the users with devices that are not in Guided Access. To an extent the app can monitor these periods of time. Also the MDM server can apply an app allowlist so that as few apps as possible are available during this time.

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