About Apple device supervision
Supervision generally denotes that the device is owned by the organisation, which provides additional control over its configuration and restrictions. There are various ways that organisations can supervise devices; some types vary by platform.
Automated supervision by serial number recognition (all devices)
The following devices are supervised automatically when their serial numbers appear in Apple School Manager, Apple Business Manager or Apple Business Essentials:
iPhone with iOS 13 or later
iPad with iPadOS 13.1 or later
Mac computers with macOS 10.14.4 or later
Apple TV with tvOS 13 or later
Apple Watch with watchOS 10 or later
The above devices must use Automated Device Enrolment to enrol in a linked MDM solution.
Mac-only supervision (macOS 11 or later)
Mac computers are also supervised if they:
Are using macOS 11 or later and are enrolled in MDM using profile-based or account-driven Device Enrolment or Automated Device Enrolment
Were upgraded to macOS 11 or later and the enrolment in MDM was approved by a local administrator account
Manual supervision using Apple Configurator (iPhone, iPad and Apple TV)
You can also supervise iPhone, iPad and Apple TV devices manually by using Apple Configurator for Mac. This requires that you have the device in your physical possession and that it be connected to a Mac using Apple Configurator. During this process, the device is erased and all data is lost. For more information, see Prepare an iPhone, iPad or Apple TV manually in the Apple Configurator User Guide for Mac.
Supervision using the profiles command-line tool (Mac)
Mac computers enrolled in an assigned MDM solution whose serial numbers appear in Apple School Manager, Apple Business Manager or Apple Business Essentials can have their supervision reset by using the profiles command-line tool with one of these commands:
sudo profiles renew -type enrollmentprofiles -N
In macOS 14, a full-screen experience is displayed instead of asking the user to enrol. The user can choose “Not now” once, which causes the screen to be dismissed for 8 hours. After the time expires, the user must perform the enrolment or erase their Mac. During this time, the user sees a follow-up option in System Settings to start the enrolment, even before the dismissal expires.
In macOS 13.5 or earlier, if the Mac isn’t connected to the internet during the initial configuration, users are notified every 2 hours that the Mac has available device enrolment settings. They can then optionally click the notification to begin the enrolment process into MDM. Enrolment into MDM requires an administrator username and password. Or you can use the profiles command to migrate a Mac computer from one MDM server to another, including respecting non-removable MDM and regranting supervision, without erasing the Mac. Simply unenrol the Mac from the first MDM server, change its assignment in Apple School Manager, Apple Business Manager or Apple Business Essentials, have the new MDM server assign Device Enrolment settings to the Mac, then execute the command and enrol when the user clicks the notification.
Mac computers using macOS 13 or later also limit the profiles command-line tool to 10 of the following requests per 24 hours for devices owned by an organisation that appear in Apple School Manager, Apple Business Manager or Apple Business Essentials:
profiles showprofiles validateprofiles renew
For information on how to automatically supervise devices, see Automated Device Enrolment and MDM.
Identify whether an Apple device is supervised
iPhone and iPad: You can go to Settings > General > About and look for this line of text under the name of the device: “This [iPhone] [iPad] is supervised. [Organization name] can monitor your internet traffic and locate this device.”
Mac: You can go to System Settings > Privacy & Security > Profiles and look for this line at the top of the window: “This Mac is supervised and managed by [Organisation name]”.
Apple TV: You can go to Settings, then look under the image of the Apple TV on the left. If the device is supervised, look for this line: “This Apple TV is supervised and [Organisation name] can monitor the internet traffic on this device”.
Apple Watch: You can go to Settings in watchOS or open the Watch app on iOS and look for this line: “This Apple Watch is supervised and managed by [Organisation name]”.