Restrictions Profile & Control Center
What
Apple provides separate Restrictions profiles for iOS, macOS and tvOS. macOS Ventura has somewhat altered System Preferences and is now System Settings, aligning it with iOS. This has implications.
When/Why
To date, the Restrictions Payload provided the ability to control the System Preference Panes viewable on macOS. This was either a list of those denied or those allowed.
- Enabled
Preference Panes - Disabled
Preference Panes
On release of Ventura, Apple added new options for controlling System Settings. However the only option was to disable unwanted settings:
- Disabled
System Settings
All of the above are now listed as deprecated:
On making these changes, no allowance was included to ensure any of the Ventura Control Center options could be enabled. The offshoot of this is the potential to block the Control Center without a method to enable it. It is unlikely Apple will provide an update to the profile allowing enablement of Control Center.
How
If a Restrictions Payload is created to set a list of panes to enable as per the below image:
All items selected will be enabled. Due to the above, there is no way to add the Control Center and its sub categories from being enabled. As such, the Control Center will be blocked.
Manually editing the file with an attempt to add them as 3rd party panes does not work.
The only option that continues to manage the available Preference Panes without restricting the Control Center, requires a reversal of the logic; creating a list of panes to deny. The payload will need to be altered as per the below image, swapping out the chosen panes by reversing the settings of each:
