Intro to Apple Configurator 2
Apple Configurator 2 is a macOS app that makes it easy to deploy iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, and Apple TV devices in your school or business.
Note: In the rest of this document, the term iPhone refers to both iPhone and iPod touch.
Configure large numbers of devices
Apple Configurator 2 features a flexible, device-centric design that enables you to quickly and easily configure one or dozens of iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV devices connected to your Mac through USB or—in the case of Apple TV—wirelessly. After you connect a device, it can be seen in Apple Configurator 2. Simply select a single device—or many at once—and perform an action. With Apple Configurator 2, you’re able to update software, install apps and configuration profiles, rename and change wallpaper on devices, export device information and documents, and much more.
Apple Configurator 2 also includes a window that displays information for devices—such as operating system version, serial number, hardware IDs and addresses, available capacity, and log messages collected by your computer.
Activate devices without an internet connection
If iOS, iPadOS, and tvOS devices have absolutely no internet connection and they’re connected to a host Mac with an internet connection while the devices are being set up, you can use Apple Configurator 2 to activate them. Administrators can restore, activate, and prepare devices with their necessary configuration including Apps, Profiles, and Documents without ever needing to connect to either Wi-Fi or cellular networks. This feature doesn’t allow an administrator to bypass any existing Activation Lock requirements that are normally required during nontethered activation.
Customize or automate your device configuration
Apple Configurator 2 automates MDM enrollment to distribute apps seamlessly from the App Store. It does this by integrating with Apple School Manager and Apple Business Manager. The Prepare Assistant makes it easy to supervise and configure a cart of iPad devices for the classroom or to quickly enroll a large number of devices in your MDM solution for ongoing management. The built-in configuration profile editor supports creating and editing profiles with the latest iOS, iPadOS, and tvOS settings.
If you’re configuring devices in an environment where consistency is critical, use Blueprints in Apple Configurator 2 to create a custom configuration for your devices, one that can be applied with one click. A Blueprint is a template device to which you add configuration profiles and apps and perform actions, just as you would do for a connected physical device.
You can also fully automate Apple Configurator 2 and integrate its capabilities into your existing device management workflows using the included command-line tool, the AppleScript scripting library, or Automator Actions.
Support for iCloud Drive enables you to keep your configuration profiles and other settings consistent across multiple Apple Configurator 2 computers.
Here’s how you use Apple Configurator 2 to configure and deploy devices:
Create Blueprints: Blueprints let you record actions that can be applied to actual devices. You add configuration profiles and apps to Blueprints, just as you would add them to a physical device. You can prepare a Blueprint so that it has the mobile device management (MDM) information and supervision identity attached. You can also add specific actions to a Blueprint, such as putting the device into Single App Mode. After you have the Blueprint the way you want, you can apply it to devices. See Use Blueprints.
Create configuration profiles: You can change device settings, letting users automatically connect to Wi-Fi networks, preconfigure mail and Microsoft Exchange settings, and more. See Create and edit configuration profiles.
Prepare devices: You first configure one device and then deploy that configuration to many devices at once. Preparing devices is a great deployment option for enterprise organizations and schools that provide devices to employees or students for their day-to-day use. You can reuse devices the organization already owns, or you can begin with new ones. See Intro to preparing devices.