Getting started
One phone, one cable, about fifteen minutes. After that, every change takes seconds.
What you need
- A Mac on macOS 27 and Apple Configurator, free on the Mac App Store
- A USB cable and any iPhone on iOS 18 or later
- About fifteen minutes. The phone is erased once
Set up a phone
- Open Tinyphone and plug the iPhone in. The app reads the phone first: iOS, supervision, profiles, apps.
- Pick a mode, such as Kid, Focus or Easy: the apps it keeps, everything else gone.
- Setup checks that Find My is off, a backup exists and iCloud is on.
- It erases the phone, reinstalls iOS, supervises it from this Mac, installs the mode and hands the phone over for Apple Account sign-in.
- It reads the phone again and shows you what it carries.
What comes back
- eSIMs stay. Photos, contacts, notes and messages in iCloud come back after sign-in
- App data, the Home Screen layout and Apple Watch pairing do not come back
Every change after
Plug the phone in, change the mode or its apps, apply. Seconds, no erase. The Mac reads the phone back after every write, so what it shows is what the phone has.
Undo it
From the same Mac: switch the phone to Full Phone, remove Tinyphone’s profiles, or erase and start over. The key that supervises the phone is on your Mac and backed up in your iCloud Keychain.
From a terminal
Everything above runs from the command line too, and an assistant can drive it over the MCP server.