Smart Group workaround to determine which clients have software updates available in Jamf

As Graham Pugh and others have reported, running softwareupdate --list can cause the softwareupdated daemon to hang, also when softwareupdate is run as part of updating inventory in Jamf Pro. Pugh discovered that you can read the number of available updates using the following command: defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.plist RecommendedUpdates To be able to send notifications … Continue reading Smart Group workaround to determine which clients have software updates available in Jamf →

Making sure Preview.app is the default PDF reader

Malware can sometimes come in the form of a PDF that contains embedded scripting language. Luckily, Apple's Preview.app, which is the default PDF reader on macOS, does not support most of Acrobat's features that can enable this type of malware. It is also much lighter than Acrobat Reader, and a great application. Making sure Preview.app … Continue reading Making sure Preview.app is the default PDF reader →

Silent Office 365 upgrade using msupdate and Jamf

It is entirely possible to silently upgrade users from Office 2016 VL to Office 365/2019 without user interaction, provided they are already using Outlook with an Office email account. The only thing your users will see, is a window informing them Office is being activated the first time they start one of the Office applications … Continue reading Silent Office 365 upgrade using msupdate and Jamf →

Analyzing app behavior to assist MDM installations

Creating packages, scripts and policies that properly deploy macOS applications can be easy as pie. Especially if your only goal is to repackage a simple app that would otherwise be dragged into the Applications folder without applying further settings, or if the vendor has supplied a suitable .pkg and documented their settings. At other times, … Continue reading Analyzing app behavior to assist MDM installations →

Preloading the Chrome bookmarks bar with Office 365 links and favicons

There are two kinds of Chrome MDM settings: hard and soft ones. Or user-unmodifiable and user-modifiable, if you like. Hard settings can be set using a configuration profile, using the Chromium policy list as a reference. Soft settings are often set using a list of master preferences. The latter isn't very well documented, and if … Continue reading Preloading the Chrome bookmarks bar with Office 365 links and favicons →

Mitigating issues with Microsoft OneDrive on Mac

Note: Microsoft has, as of 2026, largely fixed the issues described in this blog post.Some Microsoft applications have historically shown stability and reliability issues on macOS. OneDrive, for instance has the following issues on macOS: It does not allow files that contain unsupported characters or leading and trailing spaces to be synced. If a folder … Continue reading Mitigating issues with Microsoft OneDrive on Mac →

Create a local record with information from Jamf, for later use in scripting

When running shell scripts on client machines through Jamf, information about the machine and user in question is sometimes needed to get things done right.Among the most frequently used pieces of information:The currently logged-in user: Often used to run shell commands as the user using sudo -u $loggedInUser, since many settings and commands will only … Continue reading Create a local record with information from Jamf, for later use in scripting →

Standard users in macOS enterprise settings

Security standards in many organizations require users to run as standard users. In the past, not having local admin rights would often cause issues as more software required elevated rights. For instance, the Adobe applications would not work as expected. On modern versions of macOS and Windows however, users can do most things without local … Continue reading Standard users in macOS enterprise settings →

Favourite apps in 2019

These are some of my favourite apps for macOS administration and tinkering. Zsh with Oh My Zsh and Fish with Oh My FishThe Bash shell bundled with macOS is still at version 3.2 even though version 5 has just been released. Why not try something entirely different? FSMonitorShows what files are being modified in real-time. … Continue reading Favourite apps in 2019 →