I have managed to get my Development and Distribution certificates in something of a mess (started with separate one for each App and more)
I'd like to start again with just one, generic, cert for each of Development and Distribution.
There are lots of tutorials on re-creating deleted or expired certificates but I can't find any confirmation that I can delete everything and start afresh (and, presumably, then use the new cert for new apps and/or updates to old ones?)
Has anyone actually gone through the steps of cancelling/deleting all Apple certificates and starting again? If so, any advice on steps and things to avoid will be appreciated.
thanks
Many thanks for the suggestions which I have now implemented.
I do now have just one each Development and Distribution certificate (although Xcode re-created the dozens of provisioning profiles I was trying to get rid of - I guess I will have to live with that long list for ever...).
An interesting result is the error message I received when I uploaded a new version of an App:
"Potential Loss of Keychain Access - The previous version of software has an application-identifier value of ['xxxxxxxxx.com.jeffmaynard.eurosceptic'] and the new version of software being submitted has an application-identifier of ['yyyyyyyyyy.com.jeffmaynard.eurosceptic']. This will result in a loss of keychain access."
Although the App has gone to review I am not sure of the consequences of this error message which I assume results from the certificate updates?
You have to clear your certificates in 2 places:
Keychain
Follow these steps to navigate and clear the certificates:
Open LaunchPad
Keychain Access
Select your Keychain
Select My Certificates
Now here you need to delete every certificate that starts with iPhone Developer or iPhone Distribution
Apple Developers Members Center
Login to Apple Developers
Go to Member Center
Click: Manage your certificates, App IDs, devices, and provisioning profiles
You have 2 tabs to interact Certificates and Provisioning Profiles
Remove all of them (Remember you can't delete those Provisioning Profiles, that are already in App Store).
Then you need to create it from the beginning: Follow my answer here
Related
We have multiple applications custom build for specific clients. Each application has its own "Enterprise" Distribution Certificate "iOS UniversalDistribution". Today we received word that all our client's applications have stopped working, they won't even open. At first we thought it was a bug after an update, but we noticed that our Provisioning profiles have expired. We did not receive any warnings, notifications, emails, ... they all just stopped working.
The applications are able to update themselves with a custom service we've build. Now that they won't open on the devices we fear we have to manually install the new versions on the devices?
But this means that in the future this WILL happen again. After researching the apple documentation something is still not clear. If we build a new version of the application (.IPA file) and we push the updates in the app, will the application also update all the certificates accordingly? So if we do an update several weeks before with renewed provisioning profiles will it prevent this from happening again?
Thanks in advance for the feedback.
So, unfortunately, none of the existing deployed apps will run now, so you will not be able to use the self-updating logic in the app to correct this. This is up to the developers to keep track of expiring profiles and certificates and ensure they get updated as needed.
All of the information below assumes you are using an Enterprise Distribution Profile to build these iOS apps.
You should note is that there are two things that can expire: the provisioning profile and the certificate.
Expiring Provisioning Profile:
Typically the provisioning profile expiring is easier to deal with, as you only need to get a new profile on the device. Technically, doing a new build with a new provisioning profile will do this, but there are other ways. For example, if these are managed, company devices, you can typically use the MDM software to push a new profile to the devices, without requiring a new .ipa (app binary) to be installed on the device). Also, if you use wildcard app ids in your provisioning profile, installing another device with a newer provisioning profile will also work (although this is a bit unorthodox). Long story, short: You need to get the new profile on the device. At this point, that is likely through you informing users they need to go re-download a new version of the app.
Expiring Certificate
If the certificate used to code sign the application is expiring, you will need to generate a new binary with the new certificate. There are ways to resign an existing ipa, but if you have the source code, it is easier to just re-build with the new certificate. The good news is that the certificate only expires every 3 years for an enterprise distribution certificate (vs. every 1 year for the provisioning profile). So this is not needed as often. But this will certainly require you to re-create a new binary signed with the new certificate.
Preventing This From Recurring
If you rely on the app to check for updates and self update, you need to make sure a new version gets published well enough in advance that users will launch the app in the time between the new version being released, and the profile or cert expiration. This length of time depends on your app. If it's a corporate app that people use daily, you can probably get by with 2 or 3 weeks (for people who are out of the office). If it's seldom used, I would consider deploying a new version, with a new provisioning profile at least 3-6 months in advance of the old one expiring. This takes planning and reminders to ensure you don't miss the timing window.
Also of note, if you are using automatic code signing, you lose some control over when a new profile is generated and used, as well as the certificates. That's why I recommend for enterprise apps to use manual code signing settings to allow you to be very explicit with which provisioning profiles are used, as well as the cert. Also, delete all older profiles from the Mac when doing a build to ensure you are using the right profile (you can have many profiles on the Mac for the same application at any given time. You can find them here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/45642752/3708242). It's risky to assume Xcode will pick the most recent one.
I have an in-house enterprise app that is managed (deployed) from MaaS360
'https://portal.fiberlink.com'
And this app is built (and still maintained) in XCode 4.6.3 (i know, i know), so I don't have any of the fancy new features in XCode 7 that might help alleviate this problem. In fact, even the refresh button in Organizer no longer works... you tap it and a dialog says "service unavailable" and I've tried it on different days, so it's not just a temporary glitch or service interruption. I believe apple disabled whatever portion of their service was servicing that request from XCode 4's Organizer.
The provisioning profile on it is going to expire in March, and I'm trying to figure out how to renew it without inconveniencing the users by making them download a new rebuilt app. It would be particularly painful for them because it would require they sync a few gigabytes of data from their device through iTunes for each person, and it's a few hundred people.
My problem is, my certificate I used to sign the app is also expiring around the same time (in March).
I happened to have another certificate and an associated provisioning profile, I had generated on a different mac which expires in 2019, and I tried to use it to update the expiring provisioning profile on MaaS360 for this app in question, and I get this error
So what has me a little terrified is, I'm back on the mac where I originally created and deployed the app... if I need to renew my existing certificate (which I assume means revoking it and replacing it with a new one), in order to create a new provisioning profile, aren't I going to run into this dialog again, claiming that my certificates don't match, because I'll now have a new one, hence I can't update the profile.
If the only way to update my expiring provisioning profile is with my soon-to-be-expired-but-also-identical certificate which originally created the profile, that still means my profile is going to expire as scheduled because my original certificate will have expired too.
Is there a way out of this dilemma?
You can have two certificates active at the same time. So I would generate a new certificate using the same key you used to generate the original one. To do this on the Apple developer portal, you will need the cert signing request. Most developers don't save this when they generate their certificate the first time. The good news is, if you have the private key that was used for your distribution certificate, you can use that to generate the CSR. To find out if you have the private key, you can use this post for how to locate it in the Keychain app. https://stackoverflow.com/a/33651921/3708242
Once you have verified that you have the private key used for the certificate for the app store distribution, you can generate the a CSR using the following procedure: https://stackoverflow.com/a/7111454/3708242
Once you have the CSR, go to Apple's developer portal and generate a new distribution certificate for "In-House and Ad Hoc" distribution. As long as you only have one out there, you should be able to create a second without having to revoke the existing one. Once you've done that, you will likely need to provide that certificate to the MaaS360 service (I'm not familiar with how that works, but somehow the Maas360 server must have the private key and certificate that the apps were built with, as it is clearly checking that when you push the build of your app and the certs don't match). So download the new cert and provide that to MaaS360.
Then, generate a new distribution profile using the new certificate. Or you can update the existing one to use the new cert by clicking the edit button on the provisioning profile, then changing the radio button to the new cert which should expire several years out. Note that this won't prevent any existing apps built using the profile from running in the meantime (revoking the certificate, however, would immediately cause the apps to stop working, which you don't want). Save and download the new profile, and use it to rebuild the app.
The app will then be built with the new certificate, that won't expire any time soon. I do think you are missing the part of the process where you will have to provide the new cert to MaaS360. I can't really help you with that part, but hopefully there is some documentation from IBM that can help you out there. But, you will need to fix it, because once the cert expires, non of the apps built with it will work. Good luck and let me know if any of this is not clear enough.
Xcode as of 6.3 is no longer allowing me to automatically perform device provisioning for a client. Has anyone else experienced this issue? I found no results when searching for this on Google...
This client has their own bundle ID and it's possible they also have their own provisioning profile for this device. So maybe Apple is matching up the bundle ID irrespective of the developer account being used for provisioning.
I was able to address the issue by modifying the app's bundle ID and manually going through the provisioning process, but I'm guessing this issue is extremely rare, so I'm not sure if this post will be of use to anyone.
When I am create new certificate from my Xcode 9.2 the error was appear
"You already have a current iOS Distribution certificate or a pending certificate request".
Just 2 step for fix this error.
Remove old certificate from developer.apple.com
Create new certificate from Xcode or developer.apple.com
My problem has been solved (I am using Xcode 9.2).
I just found that if I remove my account from Xcode, and then sign in again, it solved the issue. I did revoke my existing certificates and request new ones though as part of that process. I didn't import an existing profile.
My team has maxed out on release certificates, because apparently there is a quota.
We had to delete one of the existing release certificates.
This issue is actually more common than you think.
Some Solutions:
I usually find that opening Xcode's settings and signing out of my account and the signing in again resolves most of those issues.
You may have an older mac that already used up that one allotted development certificate. In that case you'll want to export the developer profile from that machine. If you no longer have access to that machine, it may be time to invalidate that certificate and simply request a new one.
Another option may be to double check your build settings in your project and ensure that it's looking for the right certificate. It's fairly common in my experience for these settings to make decisions on their own, and confirming that they're what you expect may help.
Background:
When dealing with provisioning, it's really easy to get caught up with the frustration of all of the steps you need to go through. The first thing to note is if the error you see is talking about a "Certificate" or a "Profile." In your case, it's a certificate. Good.
Certificates differ from provisioning profiles in a few ways. Certificates are usually only generated twice: once for development, and once for distribution. (Exceptions to this rule are if you decide to add support for some of the special features like push notification or for generating passbook passes on a server.)
The process for generating certificates is also a little more bureaucratic than profiles. You request a certificate from Apple's Member Center. You generate a provisioning profile.
The reason for the word request vs generate is because both Apple and your iOS team's admin need to approve certificate requests. This is because certificates identify you as part of your iOS developer team, and offer all the powers associated with that.
For the sake of completeness, I'll add that provisioning profiles are generated based on that certificate, and really only tell iOS what environment your app is meant to run in. (On any device via the store, specific devices, etc.)
Now, the important part for you is the request business. Most people don't pay much attention to this terminology, since indie developers and small teams (where the developers are admins) don't require developers to ask for permission.
Your error is talking about a previously generated certificate or request. You can only have one development certificate per developer. You either have one, or you've requested one and someone has to approve.
That's what's happening here.
This process is made simple with Xcode 8.3 and 9. Just delete one of your old certifcates in the "validate" interface and click the plus button to request new one, Xcode will request for you and add it in keychain. in my case, maximum number was reached, so I deleted one which was lost in a old Mac and created new one.
This error may also be occur if you reach your distribution certificate limit. After creating 3 iOS Distribution Certificates in an account, the following error message will be displayed when you try to create 4th one: "You already have a current Distribution certificate or a pending certificate request."
Open this link
https://developer.apple.com/account/resources/certificates/add
Press + icon in front of Certificate
Check Apple Distribution section if its show the red text as shown in image then you should revoke you existing certificates to generate new one because you have reached you limit.
Just 2 step for fix this error.
Remove old certificate from developer.apple.com
Create new certificate from Xcode or developer.apple.com
Delete old developer certificate from https://developer.apple.com/account/ios/certificate/ and try to create developer certificate from xcode
1) Remove old certificate from apple developer account.
2) Go to the 'Xcode' 3) Select 'Preferences' option and then Select the 'Account' Tab
3) Select apple id from left side and click on 'Manage Certificate'.
4) Click on '+' (add certificate) button.
5) Add 'Apple Distribution' Certificate.
Unfortunately, only a macbook restart resolved this for me.
Creating another Distribution certificate was not an option, because it had already reached the max. number of certificates.
I manually added an existing one (incl. its private key) to the Keychain …and still Xcode said "Not in Keychain". I then tried to trigger a refresh of the Xcode listing by removing & adding my developer account to Xcode, but that didn't work — neither did restarting Xcode.
So, when all else fails, you try to reboot your system.
When you have three active distribution certificates that were created on distinct machines, you'll see this issue. You can either ask for the private key of a previously made one or simply revoke any of them and make your own.
I'm using the latest XCode (6.1) and I need to submit the app as soon as possible, but I can't seem to get around the "Your account already has a valid iOS distribution certificate" error.
I have the client's provisioning profile and I have his distribution certificate (which is valid) and his private key (I've checked using Keychain, it's definitely there). The bundle ID is also correct. I've deleted my provisioning profiles and certificates and reinstalled the client's many times now.
What could be causing this issue? I've seen a lot of topics here on SO with this problem, so I apologise beforehand for creating yet another clone, but I really don't know how to fix this.
edit: I'm running a brand new install of Yosemite by the way
Got it solved by editing the iOS Distribution Provision Profile in the Developer Member Center.
For some reason there were 2 certificates to choose from for the Distribution Provisioning Profile. I switched over to the other certificate and I could Validate and Submit my Archive build for beta testing.
So, you may have more than one certificate for signing your Provision profiles. Make sure you have the right one (by trying all of them) and hopefully that should work.
I tried many things like Exporting Developer profile from Xcode Accounts and importing it in the organizer, installing the provision profiles from the member center, adding them to my keychain. But none of those worked. It started working only after editing the appropriate Provisioning Profile manually.
You could also trying removing all your available Provisioning Profiles and let Xcode create new ones for you. This will work too.
I also had this issue, which turned out to be caused by an attempt to export for ad hoc deployment using a development provisioning profile instead of a distribution profile. It seems this is no longer supported in Xcode 6.1. Once I created an ad hoc profile and installed that the problem went away. A more useful error message would have saved me hours of work and would be greatly appreciated, Apple.
This thread was helpful:
xcode 6 beta 2 issue with exporting ipa "Your account already has a valid iOS distribution certificate"
Besides all the other answers, there's one more possibility after 2/15/2016: the old World Wide certificate expired and I guess everyone has already downloaded the new cert (or check this out). However, you'll be seeing this error if you haven't remove the expired one. You may need to choose View -> Show Expired Certificates to unhide expired certs. If the error is still there, try regenerate provisioning profile as advised by the others.
I was moving to new Mac when I faced this issue.
On your older Mac:
Go Preferences > Accounts > Select Account > Details.
In the dropdown right click on iOS Distribution (or whatever is the name of your distribution certificate).
Export...
Set a password for the .p12 file.
Move and install this .p12 in the new mac.
Try Again.
Another possible cause for the problem (at least in my case) was that in my Keychain Access, I had two certificates for the team I was working with. One was expired, and the other one was the one I wanted to use. Deleting the expired certificate in Keychain Access solved the issue.
I ran into this problem, and I wanted to avoid screwing up my push notifications.
The easy fix for me was to just go to developer.apple.com > project > certifications, ids, and profiles > profiles > create a new profile (for development or distribution)
Download the created profile, drag and drop the profile over the Xcode icon, and then in your project target, set the new profile as the provisioning profile.
This fixed my problem--it may provide further help in the future.
The error message could mean that you need to get the Distribution certificate and private key from the developer who created them.
This can happen if some other team member has pressed the enticing "Reset" button (which means revoke certificate and create a new one).
Here is a picture what the revoked certificate looks like:
You can export the valid certificate from the developer who created
it and import it to other team members keychains.
Go to "Keychain Access" app.
Click on the "Login" in the top left box
Click on the "Certificates" on the bottom left box
Check which team member has the valid certificate:
when clicking on the "iPhone Distribution" certificate
everyone else sees "This certificate is revoked" in red at the top.
(Maybe backup the deleted certificate to avoid doing anything irreversible)
delete the revoked certificates
Export the one valid certificate and distribute to team
Import the certificate file for everyone else
Today I was solve problem by delete from keychain old certificate Apple Worldwide Developer Relations Certification Authority and install new one (exp. in 2023)
I'll add to here because while the accepted answer got me on the right track it wasn't the solution. There was a second (automatically created by Xcode) distro cert which I revoked. After doing that a new error came up. ("An App ID with Identifier '' is not available"... it also wasn't helpful) Eventually this lead me to the fact that my App Id in the member portal didn't have entitlements matching the build.
I solved this issue by editing the provisioning profile in the member center which is used in my app and re-install the provisioning profile.
I recently changed computer.
The reason for me was that I had several developer certificates in the Apple Developer member portal.
The solution was :
Go to Apple Developer Portal
Go Under Certificates -> Production
Click on "Revoke" for the oldest certificates and keep the most recent one
Revoking certificates won´t affect your Apple Store apps :).
I had this happen to me when I accidentally reset the certificate on another mac. Here's my scenario.
Mac1 - Had working certificate.
Mac2 - I accidentally reset the iOS distribution certificate
Mac1 stopped working and I get the message "Your account already has a valid distribution certificate"
The fix was
On Mac2, Keychain access -> certificates -> iOS Distribution certificate (for you/your company) -> export to p12 file (it will ask you to set a password)
Copy the exported file to Mac1
On Mac1, Keychain access -> certificates -> iOS Distribution certificate (for you/your company) -> delete (this is the old one that does not work)
On Mac1, double click the p12 file (then enter your password).
You should see a new iOS distribution certificate (for you/your company) in the certificate section of Keychain access.
This fixed the issue for me on Mac1.
Got it solved by deleting the provisioning profile which is managed by Xcode
(XC iOS Ad Hoc: *) from the member center
Ok, I am completely pulling my hair out on this one.
Back in July I created a provisioning profile so I could test on my iPad.
Then at the end of August I tried submitting my first App to the iTunes Store. The process was a complete nightmare, and I struggled. A lot. In the end I found a tutorial with relatively recent information in it, and only by following it step by step could I actually get anywhere with this. Unfortunately the result of this was that I created a new provisioning profile.
Now when I try to test on my iPad I get the following error in Xcode:
Certificate identity 'iPhone Developer: MyName' appears more than once in the keychain. The codesign tool requires there only be one.
I check the keychain, and sure enough there are the two provisioning profiles for development, one from July and the one I used to submit to the iTunes Store in August.
Now what I want to do is get rid of the old one, and then connect my iPad up to the new one. I can get rid of the old one fine, but I cannot connect my iPad to the new one, it insists on using the old profile, even to the point of re-attaching it to the keychain after Ive deleted it.
Can anyone tell me:
How to connect my iPad to the new provisioning profile?
And while we are at it, can anyone shed any light on why this entire process is so convoluted and difficult? Considering that so much of Apples interface is so well designed and fluid, this process of registering certificates and applying them to different devices and Apps seems so backwards. I initially suspected this was just me, but googling for these error messages reveals that there are many who are struggling at various points along this process.
This has nothing to do with Xcode and everything to do with keychain.
Open keychain.
Find the signing certificates that are tied to your provisioning profiles.
Delete one. You probably want to keep the newer one, so look at the expiration dates and remove the one that expires first.
Restart Xcode
You may need to update your provisioning profile if it isn't tied to the new certificate, but it won't be as painful as creating a new certificate.
Here's a broad overview of how code signing in Xcode works. It a bit much but will explain what's wrong with your configuration, and how you can fix it.
There are three parts to the mechanism that ensures that you are who you say you are and that your app is allowed to run where it wants to.
You've got a pair of keys, one public and one private. Your public key matches your private key, which identifies you.
Your keys are used to generate certificates. Generally, you'll have one certificate for development and one for distribution,either on the App Store or via Ad Hoc distribution. These certificates permit you to provision your apps.
Each certificate is used to generate provisioning profiles. The profiles must be attached to either a development or a distribution certification. A distribution profile either works on the App Store, or it contains a list of device IDs which may run apps signed with that profile.
If your certificate is expired, the provisioning profiles that are created with it are going to be invalid. In this case, replace both the certificate and the profiles. Generate a certificate signing request (CSR) from Keychain Access and upload it to the developer portal.
If you have multiple certificates in your keychain, Xcode won't know which one to use. This may happen if you renew your certificate and don't remove the old one. (It may also happen if you exported your developer profile and then imported it later. Your old certificates will carry over.)
If your provisioning profile is expired or invalid, you can renew it in the developer portal without generating a new CSR. You can just attach it to an existing valid certificate.
Certificates can't be carried over from one machine to another without moving the original key pair that requested it. Exporting the certificate from Keychain will export the keys as well.
Delete the old one, and start build with new.
One more way you can try , set code signing identity with profile you want to run in both target as well as project build setting.
Hope it will help you.
Otherwise you have to delete old one.