How do I install a configuration profile on my iPhone?

First off, you’re in luck that we here at AskDaveTaylor HQ are in a ton of beta programs, with access to a lot of early release software and systems from a variety of vendors including Apple. I could tell you that I’m already running Mavericks on my MacBook Pro, for example, but let’s gloss over that part as it’s stable and not worthy of mention at this juncture. 🙂

In addition, there’s an AskDaveTaylor iPhone app that offers easy access to everything that’s on the site so we’re in that beta program too. In fact, I know exactly what mesasge you’re talking about and it was a stumper for us too until we learned the secret of installing additional configuration profiles on an iOS device. It’s simple and I promise you’ll be able to do it.

The wrinkle is that I’m going to be very careful about what images I share since opening up the proverbial kimono too much is a violation of the developer agreement with that big company in Cupertino. No trouble, no problems, right? We’re all in this together!

Now, let’s get down to business.

Here’s the message you saw in the developer center (which I’ve seen posted on other sites too, btw, so no worries):

Apple tells us developers what to do, but not how to do it. Downloading the ResetMusicAndVideosLibraries configuration profile is easy – just click on the link (on the developer site, of course) — but how to install it? That’s a puzzle.

The answer? You’ll laugh. Email it to yourself, open the email on your iOS device.

That’s exactly what I did. Here’s how the email looked:

Far, far more important, however, is that the email also showed up on my iPhone 5. In that case, it looked like this:

(I’ve trimmed some of the iPhone screen caps to have them fit better here)

The email looks a little bit different from iOS 6, but not much. The important thing, however, is in the middle, the “ResetMusicAndVideosLibraries.mobileconfig” icon.

Tap on it. Yes, it’s tappable. And…

That’s a handy trick, isn’t it? Now to proceed, tap on “Install” because while it doesn’t necessarily look like it, it turns out that the email app in iOS is smart enough to know that it’s seeing an installable data file and offers that as a “live” option.

A tap on “Install” and…

Yeah, that looks good. Tap on “Install” on the top right and the configuration profile will be copied and installed, once you verify you have the security passcode (usually a four-digit number). Once you’re ready to go, it’ll look like this:

Done. Installed. Now you can follow whatever instructions you’ve received to activate and use the new profile as necessary. In this case, as Apple says, you’ll go to Settings -> Music and find the new feature.

Hope that helps and hope I didn’t get too darn close to that developer agreement with what I’ve posted here. 🙂