Certificates and Profiles
Certificates, identifiers, devices, and profiles are the four pieces of signing. Get their relationships straight and signing becomes easy.
In This Chapter
- Certificates: Requesting and renewing development/distribution certificates
- Identifiers: App IDs and capabilities (Push, APNs, Sign In with Apple, etc.)
- Devices: Add tester UDIDs
- Provisioning Profiles: Bind certificate + App ID + devices into usable signing configs
Read This Picture First
- Certificate: Who is signing (dev/distribution issued to person/company)
- App ID: Which app is being signed (wildcard or explicit Bundle ID)
- Device: Test devices needed for Development/Ad Hoc
- Profile: Package the three above so Xcode/CI can sign and build
Tips
- For internal testing, prefer TestFlight; Ad Hoc has device limits and UDID upkeep.
- Distribution cert + App Store profile are often best managed automatically by CI/Xcode and renewed yearly.