Horizon Kiosk with CloudReady Chrome OS
I have been messing around with Chrome OS devices and I came across the Kiosk feature. I thought it would be helpful to write down how I configured it using Workspace ONE
CloudReady OS
I’m going to be using the CloudReady OS from Neverware. It is a Chrome OS built to repurpose old hardware. There is a free version you can use at home, but the paid version gives you the ability to enroll the device into your G-Sute account. Enrolling your device gives you the ability to manage it through the G-Suite or WorkspaceOne consoles.
Installing the CloudReady OS is fairly easy, I’m on a Mac so I downloaded the image from the website, and then used Balena Etcher to flash a USB drive with the downloaded image. When you sign up for the enterprise version of CloudReady you will be provisioned a management portal for your devices, this is where you should download an image that is specific to your account.
Workspace ONE
Device Profile and Assignment Group Creation
You will need to create a smart group to add the Chrome devices. You can use Criteria to put all the Chrome OS devices in a group, or if you don’t want all your Chrome OS devices to be Kiosks then you need add the devices manually. It would be really nice if you could add tags to Chrome OS devices in the console but as of today you can’t.
Once the group is created you can create a Profile for the Chrome OS Kiosk. Add a new profile and choose Chrome OS. We want a Device profile.
In the General setting Name the profile and assign it to the group you created for Chrome Kiosk devices.
You will need the App Id of the Horizon Client for Chrome, You can get it from the url of the application here is a link Horizon Client for Chrome OS
The Auto Login Bailout give the user a chance to quit Kiosk mode before it starts. I disabled it for my deployment.
The Extension policy is how you can configure the Horizon Client. You add JSON code to the text field and it will configure all kinds of things when the Horizon Client launches. Here is a link to the documentation for the different JSON properties. My example defines one server and a description. Click save and Publish and once the profile is pushed down to the device and it reboots you will have a Chrome OS Kiosk. I have a video below of the Chrome Device rebooting and going into Kiosk mode.
I’d like to thank Bill McLoughin, Nick Fuchs and Peter Freudenberger for helping me out with trial licenses to explore their product further. For more information about Neverware and CloudReady OS head to https://www.neverware.com/
Hope this is helpful!