Manage Sidekick Settings for Your Organization

Sidekick reads one file that only an administrator can create. Any setting in it is locked: it wins over what the user chose, and Sidekick refuses when the user, or their AI assistant, asks to change it.

Where the file goes

Computer	Path
Windows	C:\Program Files\EastPole\Sidekick\managed-settings.json
macOS	/Library/Application Support/EastPole/Sidekick/managed-settings.json

Put it there with the tool you already use to manage computers: Intune, Jamf, a Group Policy script. Those run as an administrator, which is what the file needs:

• On macOS the file and its folder must be owned by root, and neither may be writable by anyone else. Sidekick ignores a file that isn’t, because anyone could have put it there or changed it.
• On both, the file must be readable by everyone. A file Sidekick can’t read locks every setting at its most restrictive (see below).

The folder belongs to no installer, so uninstalling or reinstalling Sidekick leaves it alone.

What you can lock

The file is JSON and uses the same names as the user’s own settings. Put in only the settings you want to lock; everything else stays the user’s choice.

Setting	Values	What it does
telemetry	true / false	Whether Sidekick sends anonymous usage and error reports
observers	true / false	Whether local programs may watch the commands sent to InDesign
actionsDir	a folder path	Where users’ own Sidekick Actions are saved
sharedActionsDirs	a list of folder paths	Your studio’s shared actions, read by everyone
pinned	true / false	Keep Sidekick on the version you installed: no updates, no requests to our release site. See Stay on the Installed Version

An example that switches off telemetry and gives everyone the studio’s shared actions:

{
  "telemetry": false,
  "sharedActionsDirs": ["\\\\nas\\design\\Sidekick Actions"]
}

Sidekick reads the file as UTF-8, with or without a byte-order mark, or as UTF-16 the way Windows PowerShell 5’s Out-File and > write it.

Which Sidekick enforces it

Sidekick enforces the file from version 1.0.36 of the part you install (the installer, the Claude extension, or the npm package). Roll that version out before the file: an earlier version doesn’t read it.

Keep the Sidekick plugin in InDesign up to date as well. When the plugin is much older than the rest of Sidekick, Sidekick switches to an older version of itself that works with that plugin, and that older version doesn’t read the file either. A Sidekick pinned with pinned doesn’t switch: it refuses the plugin instead, and the Sidekick panel in InDesign says why (Stay on the Installed Version).

To check a computer, ask the AI assistant “sidekick health”. Its answer says which version is installed, whether the file was found, and which settings it locks. After deploying the file, check that the settings you put in it, pinned among them, are listed as locked. On macOS, if they aren’t, check that the file is owned by root: Sidekick ignores it otherwise.

If the file has a mistake

If the file isn’t valid JSON, Sidekick can’t tell what you meant, so it locks every setting at its most restrictive until you fix it: no telemetry, no observers, Sidekick pinned to its installed version, and the action tools refuse until the folders can be read again. “sidekick health” names the file and the error.

A single value that doesn’t fit, for example "telemetry": "no", only affects that setting: a switch is then treated as off, and a folder is ignored. For pinned, a value that doesn’t fit counts as true.