Blocking portable .app applications located under the /Users/ path**

foreverkan
New Contributor III

Our users are downloading applications from the internet to their Desktop or Downloads folders and are able to run them from there. How can I block them from executing these applications?

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

PaulHazelden
Valued Contributor

In the Restrictions payload in Configuration Profiles. go to the Applications section. At the bottom is a Restrict which apps are allowed to Launch.
It will give you 3 options
Allow Apps
Allow Folders
Disallow Folders
You should be able to put something like /Users/ in the disallow folders, and no Apps will be able to run from the Users folders.
However!
Users have a ~/Applications folder, that some Apps dump themselves in.
Some other Apps install in /Users/Shared
You can make explicit exceptions by adding the allowed apps in there to the Allow Apps list.

But. Test it and Test it and Test it again. If you block the wrong things you might end up needing to erase the test Mac.

View solution in original post

3 REPLIES 3

PaulHazelden
Valued Contributor

In the Restrictions payload in Configuration Profiles. go to the Applications section. At the bottom is a Restrict which apps are allowed to Launch.
It will give you 3 options
Allow Apps
Allow Folders
Disallow Folders
You should be able to put something like /Users/ in the disallow folders, and no Apps will be able to run from the Users folders.
However!
Users have a ~/Applications folder, that some Apps dump themselves in.
Some other Apps install in /Users/Shared
You can make explicit exceptions by adding the allowed apps in there to the Allow Apps list.

But. Test it and Test it and Test it again. If you block the wrong things you might end up needing to erase the test Mac.

One thing I forgot. Do not make a second Restrictions Profile just to add this in. It really is not reccommended to send out two versions of the same profile.
If you already have a Restrictions profile, you will be editing that and adding to it.