Customizing the home screen dock on the iPhone or iPad with custom configuration profiles
You can remotely set up and manage your iOS devices with configuration profiles in GoTo Resolve MDM.
If there isn't any built-in profile to meet your needs, you can also use custom configuration profiles to deploy additional features to the managed iOS device.
There are multiple possibilities to configure a device with a custom profile, but as an example, this article considers how to customize the home screen layout of an iPhone or iPad. On the home screen, there is an area called a dock from which you can easily access the most useful applications of the device. From this article, you can find out how to add and remove application icons from the dock, the bottom bar, of the Home screen.
Requirements
- A supervised device with iOS version 9.3 or above
Creating the custom configuration
There are several ways you can customize the home screen for example by organizing applications and folders on it or creating new pages. This example shows how to configure an empty bottom bar (dock) on the home screen and add there some applications.
![iOS Home screen with applications on the bottom bar](https://assets.cdngetgo.com/40/cd/60ee70df4b7fb3d1d5580f089d84/iphone-with-apps-in-dock.png)
The layout of the screen may look different in the product.
- You need to create the configuration payload for the custom profile. You can create a .mobileconfig file, for example, withApple Configurator 2, or as we do in this case, utilize the example payload from Apple's documentation.
- Create the custom configuration profile in GoTo Resolve MDM ( ) and add the XML to define the configuration.
![Define configuration mobileconfig file](https://assets.cdngetgo.com/68/34/4b1940984b918bd455c17e9457cc/add-custom-configuration-profile-for-ios-empty-dock.png)
The layout of the screen may look different in the product.
In case you enter into problems with the payload, please check that there aren't any extra spaces or characters in it. This might occur when you copy-paste XML to the Custom configuration field.
Configuration for emptying the dock
For the empty bottom bar of the Home screen, the dock (marked with red on the picture) is removed from the XML payload.
![Payload for homescreenlayout iOS](https://assets.cdngetgo.com/21/72/0a698bf3412896a3a10eedd3fb42/homescreenlayout-config-file.png)
The layout of the screen may look different in the product.
Configuration for adding applications to the Dock
If you want to add often-used applications to the bottom bar, edit the Dock in the XML instead of removing it. Here is an example XML for adding the Microsoft Outlook application to the Dock.
![Add app to dock](https://assets.cdngetgo.com/6a/86/297592084082ab207824070b9d54/xml-for-adding-app-to-the-dock.png)
The layout of the screen may look different in the product.
The application is added with the values inside of the dict element. The key BundleID is required when the Type of the dock item is Application. The Bundle ID is a unique identifier of the application, and in this case, for Outlook, the identifier is com.microsoft.Office.Outlook. You might find it useful to see Apple's documentation about the item properties.
Deploying the profile
You can deploy the created configuration profile, for example, from the Devices list, the Device page (GoTo Resolve MDM.
), or the Configuration profile page ( ) in![Device page deploy custom configuration profile](https://assets.cdngetgo.com/95/0b/3b543e3a49d188182e9f8920e307/deploy-configuration-profile-to-a-device.png)
The layout of the screen may look different in the product.
You can monitor the deployment from the Action log found under Management or the device-specific one from the device page. The completed status tells about finalized deployment.
Troubleshooting
![You can replace quotation marks with the correct type with the help of Notepad.](https://assets.cdngetgo.com/61/29/03c384134c7eb215fd6b24ca22a3/applequotationfix.png)
The layout of the screen may look different in the product.