How to add Android Enterprise system apps with Microsoft Intune

This week Microsoft announced General Availability for Intune to support Android Enterprise fully managed devices. When you enroll an Android Enterprise device as fully managed device in Intune, by default most of the system apps are not available to the end-user. As a result to that, a fully managed device looks by default similar to the one below. Only a few system apps are available, besides the apps which are deployed by Intune, like the Intune and Authenticator app. Daily used apps like Gallery, Calculator and Calendar are not available.

During the several previews of the Fully managed user devices, with Intune we had no control over these system apps. Now that support for fully managed devices is general available in Intune, we finally have some control over the system apps and it`s pretty easy to add the Android Enterprise system apps to user devices with Microsoft Intune. The only information we need about the app is the Package name.

Find Android Package name

There are several ways to find the app package name of an Android (system) app. One option is to use the Google Play store. The app in the example is the Samsung Internet Browser app.

• Open the Google Play store
• Use the search bar to look for the app you wish to enable on the Android devices
• Click on the app and have a look at the URL. The package name is located at the end of the URL after the ?id=

Another option is to use an app like Package Name Viewer. Such an app is very handy when you have a device available on which the system app is installed. Or when the app isn`t available in the Google Play store. In this example we search for Gallery app package name.

• Install the app from the Google Play store
• Open Package Name viewer and scroll through the list of installed apps to find Gallery
• The package name is shown under the app name

Add Android Enterprise system app with Intune

Now that we have the required package name, we can use Microsoft Intune to add them to our Android Enterprise devices.

• Sign-in to the Device Management Portal
• Browse to Client apps – Apps
• Click Add
• Choose Android Enterprise system app as App type
• Select the App information tab
• Give the app a Name
• Enter the Publisher
• Fill in the Package name which we found in the previous steps
• Click OK – Click Add

Assign the app as required to the security group of you choice. System apps cannot be assigned as available for users.

End-user experience

Not much to show for the end-user experience. The system apps show up on the devices without any user action. As shown below, the Gallery and Internet apps are added.