Managing Sidebar Preferences with Workgroup Manager

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Managing Sidebar Preferences with Workgroup Manager

I'm trying to deploy a standardised sidebar for our managed iMacs via WGM.

I have set the preferences I want on a iMac and imported the updatedcom.apple.sidebarlists.plist file into WMG on the lion server. I've assigned the settings to the user group and set it to Always and that hasn't worked.

Logging in to the managed Macs using a user account that has the imported plist assigned hasn't made a difference to the sidebar settings.

Does anyone have any pointers for me to get this working please?

Mac mini, OS X Server

Posted on Apr 19, 2013 4:48 AM

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Answer 1

Apr 19, 2013 4:59 AM in response to AngryITGuy

You do not have control over the sidebar. The sidebar belongs to the user, not the administrator. Each user can do what they want with their sidebar including hiding it entirely.

You do, however, have control over the Dock, using the 'Dock' icon in Workgroup Manager. So do what you want to do with the Dock instead, and it will just work without you needing to mess with plists.

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Answer 2

AngryITGuy Author

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Apr 19, 2013 7:49 AM in response to Simon Slavin

Thanks for that, didn't realise the Sidebar wasn't a managed item.

I was hoping to hide things like the devices list, shared devices list and only show the logged in users Home link in the sidebar.

Guess I'll just have to trust the students not to get distracted by the many available links.

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Answer 3

Sep 2, 2013 5:26 PM in response to AngryITGuy

i did the same as you mentioned in your first post and it didn't work for me but then i tried again and when importing the plist into WGM set it as often not always and it seems to work when students log on they only see what i customized in my own plist file and because i have set the finder to simple finder in WGM they can not access the preferences to change the sidebar back

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