My iOS app (registered with 'Apple Enterprise Development Program) certificate is expired yesterday.
I've renewed it today but still my existing app is not working in iPhone device.
I've gone through several questions/answers on Stackover Flow and I found this (iOS Enterprise Deployment / Expiration) useful but it's three years old. And there so many changes have been made by Apple Inc.
My question is:
Do I need to create a new build (IPA) and share it to all users again?
or Is there any way to reactivate existing app without updating?
(Un)fortunately - There is no way to swap the code signature on the fly since it could have been heavily exploited.
I guess you do not need to make any new build, just resign the existing IPA with a renewed certificate.
If updating the app for all the users is a bigger issue for you, you can check if MDM-based solution can be applied - https://support.apple.com/business
Using MDM you can manage multiple devices at once, so reinstalling the app shouldn't take much time.
Related
We are building iOS apps for distribution in our own internal App Store using an Enterprise Developer Account from Apple. For building, we need to generate a provisioning profile, which expires 12 months from the creation. After expiration, the app doesn't work on the devices (crashes immediately because of expired Provisioning Profile), and each device needs to reinstall a new build of the app.
How can we provide our users an user friendly workflow in which they do not have to cope with crashing apps after 12 months?
Thanks in advance,
Bas
The expiration of provisioning profiles is a hassle with enterprise distributed apps. And it is something that will require ongoing maintenance from your internal development team, mobile support teams.
First, I want to point out that you don't mention certificates. Because they only expire every 3 years now (as of this writing - originally they expired every year), developers often forget about them. However, their expiration is actually more troublesome than the profiles. When a profile expires, you simply need to get another valid profile on the device. This can be done in multiple ways. You can use an mobile device management (MDM) solution to push just a new profile. Or if another app with a valid profile (that uses a wildcard ID) has been pushed to the device more recently, this can also get a valid profile on the device.
If the certificate expires, you will actually need to re-build the app with the new certificate. Old builds signed with the expired cert will not run unless. Technically, you can resign the old IPA, but the main thing to note is that the actual binary is invalid and will not work until a new binary with a proper code signing is generated. Fortunately this is only every 3 years, so it is less frequent, but I can almost promise you when it happens you will have a mess on your hands if you don't plan for it. Again, as with the provisioning profile, you could handle this by using MDM to push something new to the device. In this case, you would use MDM to actually replace the while app, not just the profile. A little more work, but it could be done.
Of course, there are reasons you may not want to use MDM. Cost could be a concern. Employees may not want the company to manage their personal devices (if these apps are going on personal devices). Ability to manage the MDM infrastructure / workload. If MDM is not a great solution for your organization, I would recommend another approach that isn't as ideal from a user experience, but could solve your problem. You could built your apps to be self-updating. In other words, on launch, your app checks a server to see if a new version is available. If so, it prompts the user to update. This wouldn't require the device to be managed, and you could easily build a shared framework to make this easy for app developers. One downside to this approach is if the user doesn't launch the app between the time you post the new version (with new profile / cert) and the time the profile or cert expires, the app will not launch, so the auto-update functionality can't run to tell the user to get a new version. It will just appear to the user as if the app is crashing. That is the one UX problem with this approach. But if you can manage that, it can provide an alternative to the MDM route.
You can manage this with an MDM server. Essentially the workflow looks something like this:
User installs MDM Profile and Accepts the prompts to allow the MDM Server to install apps.
The MDM Server is able to manage the device according to the permissions set in the MDM Profile. Apps managed by the MDM Server can then be installed and removed arbitrarily.
A quick google search for iOS MDM Server should get you headed in the right direction. Pricing for various paid options is somewhere around $15 / device / year, last time I looked into this (about a year ago). But there are one or two reasonable open source MDM Servers available as well.
A few years ago I wrote an iPad app that was to run on only a few of the client's iPads. They're currently having issues with the app exiting upon being opened. It turns out this is due to the dev provisioning profile associated with the app being expired.
I tried renewing the provisioning profile but am unable to access the Provisioning Portal because my dev account needs to be renewed. Renewing my account is not an option right now.
I'm aware that as of Xcode 8 users are able to install apps on physical devices for free. I don't have access to the client's iPads and have been issuing out updates by archiving the .ipa file and using diawi.com for them to install.
How can I just renew my provisioning profile so that my client can successfully open the app?
Thanks
This is not possible. What you need to do is generate a new, valid provisioning profile and run the app again on your client's iPad. However, I should note that for this type of development, Apple wants you to use ad-hoc distribution through the enterprise developer program.
Also, to be able to generate a new, valid provisioning profile you will need a valid account.
Ideally, your client should have their own developer account that they maintain, preferably an enterprise dev account (enterprise accounts don't require them to manage the specific device UDIDs the app needs to run on). With that, they could manage their own certs / profiles for the signing of the app. They could then grant you access as a team member to manage those things and update the app once a year.
Or, even better for them - you could even write them a script / use tools (like fastlane) to re-sign the app themselves so they could self provision. This takes you out of the loop for ongoing support, since it doesn't seem like you will / have provided ongoing support. Keeping an internal app running requires continual work (new OS updates, code signing expiration, etc.).
If you built an app for a client, you probably should have known / let them know that iOS doesn't allow unsigned apps to run on devices, and that developer provisioning profiles last at most a year. You also need to make sure they know you can't just write a native app and expect it to work forever. At some point (probably now, but they don't know it yet) an iOS update is going to break something you did in the app. The just can't see what is broken yet because your invalid cert is making it so the app can't launch. Given your lack of understanding of iOS code signing, I would assume that you likely did something in your code that was broken in subsequent iOS updates (given that very experienced iOS developers also have things break with new iOS versions are released).
At this point, I would explain them the situation and see if they would be willing to set up their own paid account (only $299 / year for an enterprise account) to get new profiles / certs set up to get the app back up and running.
My previous attempt to get some help on this topic, failed, so I'm retrying again.
I've built my PhoneGap application without any problems until our Apple Development subscription expired (I guess, all the certificates expired as well).
While renewing our Apple dev program at our company, my boss made me a new account and added me as admin to the company.
I tried remaking the certificates, and while all my builds worked over at PhoneGap Build (means, that the certificates are valid), while trying to submit our app via the Application Loader, I get a binary error, and can't go any further.
Upon browsing the forums I've found out that this could be an issue with the certificates, so I came here to ask, what could be wrong with my setup.
I have to specify, that before this expiration happened, all our builds were submitted by using a Macbook, that is no longer available, so I can't access the old keychain information.
Also, another important information: while struggling with this issue, I remade all the certificates and profiles. (the App ID remains the same, since i don't need to change anything there)
Another note: our application supports push notifications, so I added that to the App ID, and created 2 certificates: Apple Development iOS Push Services and Apple Push Services. (I don't know if I need both, but I followed a tutorial, and it worked perfectly until the recent happenings)
We couldn't release our app for weeks now, which is a huge problem right now, so any help would be appreciated.
I am updating in-house app for a client which they have a previous version currently on over 100+ iPads.
I want to push an update, but when i try to sign the app with the distribution provisioning profile it asks me for the private key. After searching, people suggested to revoke the old certificate and generate a new one on the machine i'm using so i can have the private key. I don't know if this is the best approach or not, but my client is concerned if I will be revoking the current In-House Distribution certificate, it will affect the applications which are currently distributed on those 100+ iPads? Thanks!
Unfortunately, yes. For enterprise distributed apps, the devices will regularly check with apples servers whether the certificate which has been used to sign them is still valid. So revoking the certificate will make those installations fail. Maybe not until the next reboot, maybe not when there is no internet connection available, but sooner or later, the app will refuse to launch.
If availability of the app must not be interrupted, you need to take precautions - for example by preparing the new version and notifying all users ahead of time that at a certain date, the old version will stop working and the new one must be installed.
Update:
I kept investigating and it appears like you can have two distribution certificates at the same time now. This is meant to eliminate gaps in app availability by allowing you to phase from one cert to another, way before the first one expires.
If this is still true, you might be able to simply create another distribution certificate without revoking the existing one. You will need to create new provisioning profiles as well (or update the old ones to use the new cert), but that shouldn't invalidate those already deployed. You would then be able to distribute the new / updated app and the existing installations will remain unaffected.
It has been some time since I last worked with enterprise distribution and right now, I don't have access to an enterprise dev account, so I can't try. But I don't think there is any risk if you just go ahead and try it - I assume the portal will either let you create a second cert or it just won't...
Toastor is correct - I recently had a discussion with Apple about this and it intentionally differs from App Store apps. When the distribution certificate is revoked (or expired) for an Enterprise app, the app stops working after expiration is reached, or revocation information is retrieved from Apple.
However if you manage several Enterprise apps, instead of requiring users to install a recompiled version of every single app with the new certificate, you may:
Push the new Provisioning Profile(s) to users over MDM (like Airwatch) **
Use a wildcard App ID for your apps and then as long as the user installs one app with the updated cert, it will apply to all apps that share that App ID
Allow users to download the updated Provisioning Profile without requiring an app install **
** CAVEAT: I don't code apps but do manage our certs, App IDs, and Provisioning Profiles. I haven't yet tested these approaches - it's my best effort based on notes from my recent discussion with Apple.
I developed an app for iPad that is being used by one person (never posted to the app store) it was delivered an ad hoc.
It's for personal, non-commercial use. The person is getting (of course) a 'certificate expiration' warning as the cert expires in a few weeks. Is there a way to get around that for an ad hoc app - without using using an enterprise developer account? We only have 1 user - but its important that the app continue working for him. Do we need to create a new cert, rebuild the app and send him a new IPA? Any good ideas to get around this?
You don't need to rebuild the app, just create a new IPA from your existing archive using the new certificate.
I would imagine asking Apple would be a good place to start. At least you will know if you can do so legitimately before trying other work arounds
https://developer.apple.com/contact/#technical