Smart Groups

Browse all computer and mobile device smart groups in your Jamf instance, inspect their criteria, and understand how groups relate to each other — without opening Jamf Pro.

What Nexus Shows

The Smart Groups view lists every smart group in your Jamf instance. For each group, Nexus displays:

Group name — the display name as configured in Jamf Pro
Member count — live count of devices currently matching the group's criteria
Criteria preview — a summary of the first 1–2 criteria so you can identify the group at a glance
Nested group indicator — a badge that appears when the group's criteria reference another smart group
Last updated — timestamp from Jamf Pro for when the group definition was last modified

Click any group row to expand the full details panel, which shows all criteria and any linked downstream usage (policies, profiles, etc.).

Computer vs Mobile Groups

Smart Groups is split into two tabs at the top of the view:

Computer Smart Groups — groups that target Mac computers enrolled in Jamf Pro. These are the most commonly used groups for policy and profile scoping.
Mobile Device Smart Groups — groups targeting iOS, iPadOS, and tvOS devices. Useful for MDM profile scoping and app distribution.

Nexus fetches both types simultaneously on load. You can switch between tabs without triggering a new API call — the data is loaded once and cached for the session.

Criteria Inspector

Click any smart group to open the Criteria Inspector panel. This shows the full, structured criteria list for the group — the same information that's in Jamf Pro's smart group editor, but readable at a glance:

Criterion name — the Jamf attribute being evaluated (e.g. “Operating System Version”, “Last Check-in”, “Extension Attribute”)
Operator — the comparison operator (is, is not, like, greater than, etc.)
Value — what the criterion is compared against
And/Or connector — how the criterion joins the next one in the chain
Priority — criterion order, which affects evaluation sequence

If a criterion references an Extension Attribute, Nexus links directly to that EA's record so you can inspect its definition without leaving the app.

Nested Groups

Jamf allows a smart group's criteria to include “Group Member of” — meaning a device must be a member of another smart group to qualify. This is powerful but dangerous: a change to the nested group silently changes the membership of every group that references it.

Nexus highlights nested group relationships with a warning badge. When you expand a group that uses nested criteria, Nexus shows:

The name of every parent group that this group is nested inside
The name of every child group that this group references in its own criteria
A visual indicator of nesting depth — groups nested 3 or more levels deep are flagged as high-risk

Note: Deeply nested smart groups are one of the most common causes of unexpected scope changes in Jamf environments. If a group with 500 members is referenced by 12 policies and you edit its criteria, all 12 policies are silently affected. Use the Blast Radius Analyzer before modifying any group that shows a nesting badge.

Finding Empty Groups

Groups with zero members are shown with a subtle red dot indicator. An empty smart group can still be scoped to policies and profiles — those policies will simply deploy to no one. Ghost Hunter will independently flag empty smart groups as part of its audit, but you can also filter for them here using the Filter: Empty Groups toggle at the top of the list.

Integration with Scope Inspector

From any smart group's detail panel, click Inspect Scope to jump directly to the Scope Inspector with that group pre-selected. The Scope Inspector will then show every policy, configuration profile, and app installer that uses this group in its scope — giving you the full downstream picture.

See the Scope Inspector documentation for full details on how scope analysis works.