I've recently developed an application for the place that I work, and they many colleagues would like to use it.
These colleagues live miles away, and my research has told me it's very hard/impossible to load iPhone apps onto a non-jailbroken device.
So I would like to know if it is possible to put an app on the appstore for free, but only allow people with login credentials to access it or something?
Probably it is not so hard as you thought. You can use over the air distribution, without upload app to AppStore. You can find lots of useful info here.
Register an Apple ID (Or you already have one)
Join the Apple Developer Program (Cost you $99 every year)
Archive your app using AdHoc certificate, every device registered in the provisioning profile will be able to install the app
You can use iTunes Connect and keep your app in preview version or beta version. You can also add 1000 external users for your app and 25 internal users.
Internal users will get update just after you upload new build of your app and external will get after beta review. You just need users name and email This would be helpful for you.
Related
I have an Xcode app that I have just finished developing. I do not wish to put this app on the App Store. Instead I would like to build the app and then serve it over my local host, so anyone connected to the URL on my network can simply download the app and use it.
How exactly can I achieve this?
One issue I am running into when selecting the organizer after archiving is that the buttons for export is grayed out. I am signing as my (personal team) but it does not seem to cooperate. How can I do this?
You have a few options here:
Enterprise developer account
Additional cost and can't upload to AppStore, users when installing for the first time have to trust the developer before the app will run
Ad Hoc profile
Requires adding UDIDs for all of the devices that you want to be able to run. Profiles will eventually expire (12 months I think). Would usually use this option with a service like HockeyApp/Diawi
Testflight
If you use internal testers then limited to 100 users that have to be invited to the Apple developer tea. If using external testers then can have much higher number of users, but app has to go through a short review process similar to when submitting for review to the app store
I recently finished an application in Unity for a client who runs a sporting event and wanted the app to let the referees keep a more accurate log of the statistics of each game. When building for android, i get a single file that i can send to my device and install it/run it. The part that i have some questions is re-building that same project for IOS.
I know i MUST have xcode which means i MUST have a mac OS, but here are a few questions that i am unaware of.
1) With the most recent release of xcode, developers dont need the $99 apple developers kit to produce something and test it on their device. From what i learned, is it true that you need to verify each device you send the application to in order to test it?
2) Is there a way to compile the IOS application in a way that i can get a single file, or even a folder, and send it via email to my client, at which point they can download the file to their phone and have the application installed?
3) What is the easiest route i can take in order to get my application into ~30 peoples iphones without individually signing each phone to my application?
Thankyou for your help!
You will have to remove this question as what i understand this is a programming site, Please find the answer for reference below as per your question order.
with xCode 7.0 you can do this, we dont need any licenses and its free for any number of devices to test , refer :- link
Yes you can generate a executable which is termed as iPA , but if you want anyone else to install the iPA, either you will have to generate this using a enterprise profile, or you wil have to add you client device id while generating the profile on apple developer protal :- refer :- link
post which they can install the iPA using itunes
This is not possible as per my knowledge, as Apple has strict poilicies as you cant distribute witout their knowledge. that is the reason of having the apple developer account at first place.
Hope the following helps:
1) For testing on your local device XCode should set up proper provisioning files for the development builds of your app automatically once you purchase a developer license.
2) I build Enterprise Ad Hoc applications for a large publicly traded client and I'm able to send the compiled .IPA file to the client and have him test it by installing it via iTunes after I've signed it with a production certificate through XCode. He tests the app using that method before using a third party vendor to distribute the app on their corporately owned iPhones. The same should work if you sign your application with a production cert, although the aforementioned may be limited to the enterprise account's certificate.
3) If you're trying to remotely install a development version of the app on a test phone you will need to verify the phone via UDID in the Apple Developer center for AdHoc distribution, or use the TestFlight method. You can read more about how to do both of these methods here.
Hope this answer will help you out & good luck!
I think for that what you want you need a Paid Apple Developer because it is not possible (without Jailbreak) to install Apps which are not from the AppStore in iOS. So you have to "test" the App on each iPhone you want the App to run on, or you have to publish it to the AppStore, where you can set, that only specific Apple-IDs may download your app.
Thanks luca4499 and Max. I guess the $99 apple dev kit is the way i'm going to have to go then.
To clarify to other users interested in the same questions.
You can develop for multiple people without using the dev kit as long as your list of people isnt changing often, or you are ok with adding each device separately.
If you want to distribute your application, the easiest way is to get the apple dev kit.
Is there any way to distribute ios applications through my own website, not using app store?
I mean is there any way that enables end users to download the .ipa file from my website with their browser application and install it directly on their iOS devices?
I have looked around in the web and googled it, but it doesn't seem to be any option for it out there, I just want to make sure of it.
Thank You
There are several possibilities, which probably won't match your needs:
Since last month it's possible to test apps on a device without the need of a paid membership.
There's a possibility to deploy an app through a service like TestFlight, but this needs either a profile installed on the device (like HockeyApp) or always new build since the old ones expire after 30 days.
You could deploy an app with the Enterprise Program
The easy way you describe is not possible.
Apart from the options mentioned above there are 2 more methods.
Method 1:
You could ask the user to open a webpage in safari browser with the following link in it.
href="itms-services://?action=download-manifest&url=url of the manifest file"
The app is installed as soon as the user clicks the link.
Method 2:
You can also leverage iOS mdm solutions like Hexnode MDM though its bit of an overkill.
here is a link on how to distribute app without app store
UPDATE:
BuddyBuild service will stop on 1-3-2018, the other alternative I know is https://www.diawi.com
Old ANSWER:
Try BuddyBuild , after making a build you can take link to IPA file and distribute it as shown.
The options include:
App Store (free or paid)
Enterprise Distribution (must be within an organization)
Open source distribution
It does not sound like any of these will meet your requirements, so no.
Further explanation:
Just to be clear, the limitation is not in distributing your .ipa file, it is the ability for users to install it on their phone. iOS requires an app be signed by Apple (from the App Store), from an Enterprise certificate, or from a developer certificate when a valid provisioning profile includes the target device.
Basically there are three ways
App store
With this method anyone with an iPhone can have access to the application. You can distribute an unlimited number of applications like this. Apple gets a 30% cut. Of course, Apple must approve your application.
Ad hoc
You can distribute applications using ad hoc without going through the app store, but you are limited to a maximum of 100 devices. With this method you can distribute your application from a web site, email, etc.
Enterprise
The method is for internal distribution in companies with more than 500 employees. Apple does not provide any more public detail that I could find on this method.
It doesn't sound like any of these methods meet your criteria unless you have fewer than 100 customers and don't plan to exceed that number. It sounds like from the question your customers are not internal to your company.
I would advise contacting Apple. They might be able to arrange some kind of custom distribution deal.
You if don't want to upload your files to the already mentioned web services, you can host your IPA in your own computer and distribute over the internet using ngrok and the approach given by jithin.
I've created a server that does exactly that and also is protected by password. You can check it out here:
https://github.com/Edudjr/IPAServer
To send build to testers or client I am generally using installonair.com which allows to upload IPA file and generate short URL which we can provide to other users and they can download and install easily from that link.
There are other options as well like Apple Testflight, hockeyapp but I found installonair.com is the quick one.
If you have and Enterprise membership you can do this, but it really isn't what they want you to do on a large scale.
Take a look at this question: Deploying an iOS Application Using Apple Enterprise Developer Program
You can use enterprise distribution services like BuildCannon, but you still need an apple enterprise account. I use a custom solution, but it's a pain to maintain.
I have a system which I want to present to potential investors. It is a client / server system and the client runs on mobile devices.
The client can only be used when certain people are connected to the server via another app, so I currently don't want to upload it to the app store for public use.
When I present the system to investors I can make sure that the correct people are logged in and run the demo.
I read online and didn't find a suitable distribution mechanism. I don't want to bother my potential investors with details about finding their device ids so I don't think I can use ad-hoc distribution. I can't upload it to the app store because the service isn't available 99% of the time. Any other options"?
Thanks.
Well you options are limited, you can open a new Apple Developers Account for Enterprise distribution. But the license for these distribution does restrict the distribution to company employees only.
You can use the iOS 8 SDK and Xcode 6 to distribute your app to 25 beta tester, wihtout going thru review. And later Apple will allow you to beta test, with app review, for a 100 users.
But for now AdHoC will be your best option, and use something like HockeyApp or TestFlight for the distribution. But using AdHoc does require you to have the device UDID before hand as they need to added to the AdHoc Profile.
Best way to distribute iOS app for testing or demo is to use Testflight. It is much easier then distributing IPA file and letting anyone install it on their iOS device.
I would suggest using TestFlight as it is simple and reliable. The only thing is, you need to register with the device ID. You can send the testFlight build to your selected clients with this.
www.testflightapp.com
Make an enterprise adhoc of your application. Apple allows you to create adhoc of your applciation with 100 users allowed at max.
And then you can demo your application to 100 people.
If you "don't want to trouble the investors with finding their device ids", then test flight is your best options. Your investors just need to install test flight make there account(with really easy steps) on test flight. And accept your invite. After they are are in your team you can easily get there device id by clicking info button next to there name on screen, under people tab of website.
Check this image for detail:
I'm currently developing an iOS app for a company as a consultant and they explicitly asked that the app should not be visible in the public app store but I need to distribute to the employees and contractors.
What are the necessary steps in order to achieve this goal? I've found info on the web about the Apple Enterprise program but the procedure for the distribution is somewhat unclear to me, as the documentation I found is messy.
Could someone please explain what do I need and what are the steps to follow in order to distribute the app in such fashion? I've made clear the steps to get to the .ipa file, I need to put the file on the devices.
Thank you.
You can build your own server and host the application there itself.
You need to uploaded the IPA file on the server and create an HTML page through which it can be installed directly in the device.
This method is called Over The Air distribution. TestFlight uses the same method to do so.
Please refer this link for complete process:
http://aaronparecki.com/articles/2011/01/21/1/how-to-distribute-your-ios-apps-over-the-air
Create a distributed provision file for you app(You need to add the device identifier who want to install the app).
Build you app and distributed with ad hoc
Then the employee can install the app from itunes.
You can also enable the employee to install from safari, please refer here for more detail information.
If you release only a file.ipa to install that you need the jailbreak on the device, that's if is a big company is impossible, but you have a 2 possible ways:
1) huge an slow but is effective, finish you app and pass the project on a laptop, create new buy a new developer program only for this company, setUp the laptop with new certificate and install the app on all company device manually one by one, ins very slow and huge process, but it work, no app on appStore, and no body know that your project exist.
2) publish on app store with AdHoc provisioning profile, have 100 device per App, but you can publish more same app with different name ex: App1, App2 ext.
The app is on appstore, but not visible, only the device with AdHoc Provisioning Profile can install the app.
3) make a jailbreak on a device company heheheh
Hope this help you
Firstly, the app store is the the primary route for App distribution for iOS.
That said, I have done beta app distribution in the past using test flight.
http://testflightapp.com/
This size has usually been small, but you are usually limited by Apple to 100 ad-hoc devices per year. If your install base is going to exceed that, then you may need to look into other methods. Such as enrolling in the Apple's enterprise Program, which depending on the size of the company you're working for, might be a better option.
https://developer.apple.com/programs/ios/enterprise/