Hi IT specialists! Today we’re looking at a configuration that’s highly requested in both enterprise and education environments: how to hide specific apps on managed iPhones and iPads. The goal is often twofold: blocking access to non-essential features and removing potential distractions for end users.
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Disclaimer
Before we dive into the actual configuration, a key disclaimer: this policy only works on Supervised devices.
This means devices must be enrolled in Intune via Apple Business Manager (ABM) using an Automatic Device Enrollment (ADE) profile. If you are managing manually enrolled devices or a BYOD scenario, this procedure will have no effect.
With that out of the way, let’s jump into the Intune portal and start “operating”! 😆
Retrieving Bundle IDs for System Apps
To hide an app, Intune needs its Bundle ID, a unique string that identifies the application within the operating system. In this article we’ll focus on two native apps that IT admins often want to remove from users’ view: Freeform and Games.
Fortunately, Apple gives us an official resource. There is an Apple Support page that’s a real gold mine for us admins: it lists all the Bundle IDs of the native apps preinstalled on iOS and iPadOS, ready to be copied.
Here’s the link to the support page:
Creating the Policy in Intune
Once you have collected the required IDs, move over to the Microsoft Intune portal to create the actual configuration. To achieve the result, we’ll use an iOS/iPadOS-specific Device Restrictions profile (or alternatively the Settings Catalog).
One small but important technical detail: even though the Intune portal lets you hide apps by simply entering the App Store URL, I personally always prefer to use the Bundle ID.
So let’s go ahead and paste in the strings we gathered in the previous step.
The trick for third‑party app Bundle IDs
We’ve seen how to handle Apple’s native apps, but what if you want to hide a third‑party app (for example a social network or a messaging app)?
In this case Apple does not provide a handy list like it does for system apps. However, there is a very quick “trick” to get the Bundle ID starting from the App Store web page.
The method is to search for the desired app on the web version of the App Store, identify the numeric ID in the page URL, and use it (via a specific query or free online tools) to obtain the exact Bundle ID to add to your policy.
Here is the link where you “append” the app’s numeric code so you can retrieve the text file and extract the Bundle ID (you can see the exact procedure in the video below).
https://itunes.apple.com/lookup?id=<qui il codice>
Final Result on the Device
After applying the policy and waiting for the device to sync, it’s time to verify the result.
As you can see in the video below, when scrolling through the App Library and the Home Screen on our test iPhone, the Freeform and Games icons have disappeared. It’s important to note that the apps are still technically installed on the system, but they’ve been made completely inaccessible and invisible to the user.
Documentation
For anyone who wants to dig into every single technical detail, below you’ll find what I’d call an absurd amount of documentation (yes, mandatory quote 😆).
Make sure you study it.
Conclusions
We’ve seen how to clean up the interface of our corporate devices by hiding everything that isn’t strictly necessary for day‑to‑day work.
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See you next time!
Rick
