Intro to buying content in Apple Business Essentials
The App Store features thousands of apps. Fortunately, Apple Business Essentials gives your organization a simple way to acquire and manage these apps in the App Store. Using device management, you can install and update apps remotely, even if the App Store is disabled on the device.
Note: Depending on your local tax requirements, you may be required to provide tax information when you initially set up your organization to buy content.
Distributing apps
Besides buying apps, you can also revoke and reassign apps to different devices and users. In this way, you always retain full ownership and control of apps you bought. You can assign the apps you bought through Apple Business Essentials to any devices or users in any country or region where those apps are available from that location’s App Store. (The App Store Country or Region is determined by the address submitted when your organization signs up for Apple Business Essentials. For example, if your organization signed up with an address in the United States, the App Store locale is set to United States.)
App distribution works best when the app is assigned before devices are configured or given to users. After the user receives the device and completes the Setup Assistant, Apple Business Essentials can send the user an invitation by email or push notification. When the user accepts the invitation, the user has access to all of the apps—which are then remotely installed on the user’s devices.
Watch a video on distributing apps.
Note: In-app purchases and subscriptions aren’t compatible with volume purchasing, Managed Apps, or Managed Apple Accounts. Developers may offer a separate full-featured version of their apps (sometimes as a Custom App) for education or enterprise customers that need to deploy apps at scale.
If you assign apps to a device through device management
Apps that are assigned to a device or user through a device management solution, including Apple Business Essentials, may be automatically removed when a user unenrolls the device from device management.
In addition, if a user restores apps through a backup from the Finder (in macOS 10.15 or later), from iTunes (in macOS 10.14 or earlier), or from an iCloud restore from a backup, the apps aren’t automatically reinstalled.
Note: To learn whether purchasing content in volume is available in your country or region, see the Apple Support article Availability of Apple programs and payment methods for education and business.
App assignment summary
The table below shows the types of apps or books, and the criteria for assigning them to devices and users.
Type of app | Can be assigned to iPhone, iPad, and Mac | Can be assigned to users with a Managed Apple Account or personal Apple Account |
|---|---|---|
Free or paid apps bought through Apple Business Essentials |
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Custom Apps |
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Unlisted Apps |
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Note: To alleviate bandwidth saturation during the initial mass deployment, consider distributing only the apps necessary for the first day of deployment, and then make additional apps available to users for download over time. If the device is supervised, apps are installed silently.