VMware Workspace ONE Community
JEFFSCHROEDERJE
Contributor
Contributor

App Catalog with iOS Safari disabled: Web WS1 as default browser?

On a recent deployment, we opted to use the 'Web - Workspace ONE' browser.  The management capabilities of this browser allowed us to deploy with a config that worked.  It's surprisingly how limiting Safari and Chrome are on even the most basic browser configurations.  Why is it so bad on iOS?  It's nothing like the desktop world.  For the longest time, we tried to avoid using the VMware browser because it's not officially supported by our application providers and we have built out so much for Chrome for desktops.

Anyways, we ended up turning off Safari in the device profile restriction payload.  The thinking was that this would reduce confusion by steering the user to just one browser with a working config.  After removing Safari, must something be explicitly done to make 'Web - Workspace ONE' the default browser?  We did not see any settings for this.

With Safari restricted, it appears that the app catalog on the home screen menu does not launch.  It does not open the catalog in the 'Web - Workspace ONE' browser.

 

(The 'Web - Workspace One' browser was deployed from Apple Business Manager / VPP through UEM's 'Purchased' apps.  I'm not sure if this makes a difference.  If there are other ways to deploy the browser and it changes the config behavior, let me know.)

 

Is there a way to make 'Web - Workspace ONE' the default browser?

Is there a way to have the catalog app launch in the 'Web - Workspace ONE' browser?

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WhitemanOswalt
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Contributor

We are required to disable Safari to use a filtering browser. I use Airwatch MDM. They have an app catalog that uses a webclip to launch it. Since Safari is disabled, the web clip won't launch as it looks for Safari when you attempt to open it. I know that Apple won't budge on the default browser thing.

Our solution was to create an internal app that simply pointed the URL of the app catalog to the internal app itself, bypassing Safari. That won't work for some reason. It has opened a few times, but for the most part, it just won't launch or it crashes immediately. AW support isn't much of a help on this one.

 

Bottom line is that I'd like to find a way to deploy and manage apps (free and paid) where we don't have to manually install each app on each device.

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