For Vendors & Developers: Why Contribute to ProfileManifests?
If you're a software vendor or a developer reading this, welcome! We're glad you're here :)
This page is meant to give you a short introduction to ProfileManifests, why it exists, why it's important, and why if your software supports managed preferences you should contribute to this project.
Put simply, ProfileManifests is an open-source effort to take the Apple established & documented profile manifest format and turn it into a community-powered mechanism for more easily building configuration profiles.
Apple has made it clear that configuration profiles are the way to manage and enforce desired preferences on macOS, iOS, and tvOS. But for many years, MDM vendors have largely controlled both the implementation and the general availability of new manageable preferences introduced by Apple. While this has by-and-large given Apple administrators the tools and preferences needed to effectively manage their devices, frequently this has lagged behind new preference releases or even entire payloads by Apple.
What's worse, of the many third-party software vendors only the largest and most frequently used by admins are often supported natively within MDMs. As a result, Apple administrators frequently have to go digging through hard-to-find, incomplete, or difficult to parse documentation for managing the app preferences they need, or relying on fellow admins to share the preferences they use.
ProfileManifests was created to help bridge the gap between what Apple and other software vendors offered in terms of managed preferences that admins need, and to provide admins with an easy way to manage only the preferences they need for the software that are important to them.
ProfileManifests is the framework that powers easy-to-use apps for building configuration profiles for macOS, iOS, and tvOS. These apps include:
Apple administrators rely on these apps to build the configuration profiles which manage the preferences that ensure their organization's Apple devices are properly managed and configured. ProfileManifests maintains up-to-date preferences for nearly 50 third-party Mac apps, not including all the native Apple payloads, preferences, and apps. Checkout the full list of supported software & preferences, here.
What was a large, disparate collection of preferences has been distilled by members of the community into a single place where all Apple administrators can benefit. So important is the work of ProfileManifests that the MacAdmins Slack #profilecreator channel boasts over 1400 members!
If you have questions,