By: Abigail Stein – Product Manager | Microsoft Intune

With Intune’s August (2408) service release, Managed Home Screen (MHS) is now supported on Android Enterprise fully managed devices in addition to Android Enterprise dedicated devices. With the update to supported devices for MHS, Microsoft Intune now offers more options to select for your home screen experience for Android Enterprise corporate owned devices.

By default, your devices are pre-configured with an OEM built launcher. Launchers provide the background interface and organize access to other applications. To create a customized and consistent look and feel across these devices, you can choose to replace the default launcher. Keep reading to learn more about each home screen experience available for your corporate owned devices.

Microsoft Intune Home Screen Experiences

What is Microsoft Launcher?

Microsoft Launcher is an Android app that helps users personalize their phones, stay organized, and smoothly switch between their phone and PC. On fully managed Android Enterprise devices, it enables IT admins to customize home screens by setting the wallpaper, apps, and icon layouts, ensuring a consistent look across all managed devices.

For detailed steps on how to configure Microsoft launcher, please visit: Configure Microsoft Launcher for Android Enterprise with Intune.

What is Managed Home Screen?

Managed Home Screen is Microsoft’s enterprise launcher application which provides IT admins with the ability to customize their devices and restrict the capabilities that a user can access. When configured in multi-app kiosk mode in Intune, Managed Home Screen is automatically launched as the default home screen on the device. Regardless of what’s installed on the device, admins can pick which apps and system settings they want users to access from Managed Home Screen to ensure the content they access is relevant to their tasks.

For detailed steps on how to configure MHS, please visit: How to setup Microsoft Managed Home Screen on Dedicated devices in multi-app kiosk mode.

Begin by selecting which enrollment method is best suited for your scenario. Once the enrollment method is selected, you should then select the device experience that best meets your needs.

Select the device enrollment method

When enrolling a corporate owned Android device, you have a few options to select from based on the intended use case.

Android Enterprise corporate owned work profile: This should be selected if the device will be affiliated with one user, with a separation of work and personal profiles.

Android Enterprise fully managed: This should be selected if the device will be affiliated with one user.

Android Enterprise dedicated devices: This should be selected if the device will be a shared device. For dedicated devices, you can select whether to enroll the device with or without shared device mode.

With Microsoft Entra shared device mode: This should be selected if the device requires users to sign in to Microsoft 365 or other SDM or Intune SDK integrated applications. This should also be selected if the device intends to leverage app protection policies or Conditional Access policies for a signed in user.

Without Microsoft Entra shared device mode: This should be selected if the device does not require users to sign in to SDM integrated applications.

For more information on selecting the right enrollment type, visit Android device enrollment guide for Microsoft Intune.

Select the device experience

Once the enrollment method has been selected, admins can select between different device experience options based on what is available for each enrollment method.

Android Enterprise corporate owned work profile devices

For Android Enterprise corporate owned work profile devices, there’s no Microsoft corporate launcher supported. These devices will need to leverage the default OEM launcher or a customer launcher.

Android Enterprise fully managed devices

For fully managed devices, admins can select between Microsoft Launcher and Managed Home Screen based on the desired behaviors of the device.

When to select each device experience

If you’d like users to have access to all applications available on the device and all devices’ settings, choose Microsoft Launcher. If you’d like the user to only have access to apps and settings that are specifically allowed for use in kiosk mode, choose Managed Home Screen.

Some key differences include:

Microsoft Launcher

Managed Home Screen

Access to settings

Microsoft Launcher allows users to access all device settings via the Launcher settings page. Microsoft Launcher also does not allow for Settings menu customization.

Managed Home Screen allows IT admins to determine which settings users will have access to and does not allow access to the device settings page unless specifically allowed.

Access to applications

Microsoft Launcher allows users to access all applications available on the device.

Managed Home Screen only allows access to applications explicitly made available to them for use within Managed Home Screen.

Install type

When configured as a required app for Android Enterprise fully managed devices and set as the desired device experience, Microsoft Launcher is installed as application type “Required”.

Managed Home Screen is installed as application type “Kiosk” when configured as a required app for Android Enterprise fully managed and dedicated devices and set as the device experience.

Android Enterprise dedicated devices

For Android Enterprise dedicated devices, admins can select between single app and multi-app kiosk mode.

When to select each device experience

Single-app kiosk mode locks the devices to one app. This locks the user to the one selected application—the application will always launch with no way to exit.

Multi-app will allow users to access a limited set of apps and will set the device launcher to Managed Home Screen. Additionally, unlike single-app kiosk mode, users can exit MHS if you enable the “Exit kiosk pin” setting.

Conclusion

In the blog post, we have shown you how to select a device home screen experience for your corporate owned devices. These home screen experiences can help you customize the look and feel of your devices, as well as enhance their productivity. We hope you find these experiences useful and easy to set up with Intune. If you have any questions or feedback, please leave a comment below, tagging @IntuneSuppTeam on X, or contact us through our support channels.

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