Safari - Default Search Platform

matttye
New Contributor II

I have users with managed iOS devices in China right now and Google searches are not ideal, but Bing searches (insert joke here) seem to be working fine. Can I change the default search provider in the Safari browser on these iOS devices? Thanks in advance.

7 REPLIES 7

matttye
New Contributor II

Bump... Anyone? I know it's possible to change the default search engine in the Safari settings, but I'd like to add that criteria to an existing config profile, or create a new profile with that setting. I have to assume it's possible bit I'm just missing it in the console.

sdunbar
Contributor

Have a look here, not mentioned specifically, but might point you in the right direction:

https://www.jamf.com/jamf-nation/discussions/9160/setting-safari-behavior

matttye
New Contributor II

Thank you, SDUNBAR, but from what I can tell, all of that is for MAC OS, and I only have iOS devices in my environment. I have to wonder, of all the granularity that is possible with iOS configurations, why this is not a simple checkbox in the JAMFpro console?

sshort
Valued Contributor

You can't set a default browser in iOS, let alone the default search engine. Here a list of all config profiles that Apple offers. It's possible to create custom profiles on the Mac for stuff like this, but not in iOS. https://developer.apple.com/business/documentation/Configuration-Profile-Reference.pdf

matttye
New Contributor II

sshort, I am not trying to set a default browser. I am trying to change the default search engine in Safari on iOS from Google to another of the search engines already listed in iOS out of the box. In iOS, under Settings>Safari>Search Engine there are four different search engines listed as available choices. I just want to set that default search engine in a config profile. I have to think that something so simple would be easy to set in a config profile for iOS, considering it's a simple checkmark item.

bvondeylen
Contributor II

Feedback to Apple added… hoping this becomes a reality soon.

dpeleg
New Contributor

The problem is that google doesn't support strict search, unlike Bing/DuckDuckGo so students that search for stuff they shouldn't on google, can still see cached results (especially when searching for inappropriate content on google image search, while this is blocked completely in the other search engines.