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Comment by owisd | Hacker News Reader

Shout out for "Apple Configurator" for Mac, if a dumb phone appeals to you but can't because there are some apps you really need, I hardly ever see it mentioned in articles like this. It's designed for IT departments to configure all their company phones, but you can also use it to dumb down any iPhone by whitelisting a specific set of apps, it's way better than the parental controls / screen time options.

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> "Apple Configurator" for Mac ... way better than the parental controls / screen time options

Ok, so this sounds very interesting & useful. I'll be reading up on this, but if you have time to pass along any pointers or tips around using this for personal/household use it'd be much appreciated.

How hard/easy is it to circumvent the whitelist? Moreover, do you whitelist the whole browser?

Every time I use Safari on iOS it seems somehow kneecapped by default, so maybe whitelisting the browser is no problem.

You need to be back at your Mac to install a new profile to circumvent the whitelist, you can't do it from inside your phone.

Yes the whole of Safari can be white/blacklisted, although the way I have it set up if you're in an app with a webview it's still using Safari under the hood, and if that web view lets you browse to an arbitrary site then it can be circumventable that way. You can presumably lock it down further to prevent this, e.g. force the phone to use a specific VPN that you can then control to whitelist certain domains.

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