I am just about a week away of expiration of the Apple developer certificate. Accidentally I lost the CSR file which I used when I created the last certificate which I am currently using.
Could you please let me know what all issue I may face if I will go with another CSR for new certificate?
Note:
Without CSR, you will be able to work with existing certificate but once it expires, you must create new one and you can use/create new CSR if previous one is lost.
Updating your certificate will not impact on your distributed build on public environment (Apple App Store). But of-course it won't allow you to distribute your new build with invalid/expired certificate.
Here is an instruction from Apple Developer Documentation for Code Signing Identity, that says,
If you lose control of your Apple-issued signing identity, such as
your Developer ID or Mac App Distribution identity, report this to
Apple immediately. Apple will invalidate the old identity and help you
to replace it. While this seems like a bit of work, it is critical,
because anyone possessing your identity can distribute potentially
malicious or destructive code that looks like it came from you.
This may also help you.
No Code Signing Identities Found
Xcode detects when you’re missing a signing identity. Typically, this happens when you move from one Mac to another. Follow the steps in Creating the Team Provisioning Profile to create your signing identity and add it to the team provisioning profile. You’ll have the option of importing your signing identity from another Mac or resetting it. If you use a custom development provisioning profile that you manage yourself, it becomes invalid after revoking the development certificate. Read Editing Provisioning Profiles in Your Developer Account to regenerate it.
To avoid this problem, export your certificates as a developer profile file on the other Mac, and then import them on your new Mac, as described in Exporting and Importing Certificates and Profiles.
As per apple documentation .CSR is used in combination with your App ID, provisioning profile and entitlements. So, if one have both (App ID and provisioning profile) it will harmful to you.
.CSR explanation
I have a doubt on Code Signing during Appstore submission. I already submitted an app to appstore with the profiles and certs created and its currrently in appstore. Unfortunately, i lost my machine where i had backup of those profiles and certs. I know that Prov Profile can be downloaded from my developer account.
My Doubt here is, 1) As i dont have backup of .p12, should i need to raise a request for new certificate from my keychain and proceed with that?
2) If so, will users can be able to upgrade the existing app from the appstore?
Thanks in Advance.
Here are your answers
1) As I don't have backup of certificate and .p12, should I need to raise a request for new certificate from my keychain and proceed with that?
Don't worry, when you like to give new update for your application, create new .p12 file and use it. Certificates are used to basically authenticate your machine with developer account.
2) If so, will users can be able to upgrade the existing app from the appstore?
No problem for users, as app store distribution provisioning profile works very different from developer provisioning profile, so no user needs to update.
Just for your info: the signing files for Android are very important, not for iPhone application. For Android, if signing keys are lost, you cannot update apps, whereas for iPhone you can create new certificates and update your apps.
Yes, you can just request a new production certificate from your new machine.
Then use it for your old provisioning profile for the app.
Yes without private key in your keychain, You cant use the existing provision files created with that private key. So you need to create a new Developer/Distribution certificates in developer portal with new Certificates. This will not affect the existing application in appstore.
I've recently attempted to transfer my apple dev certificate to a new mac, however, the provisioning profiles are appearing as valid signing identity not found.
I imported my developer account into Xcode5 and when I deploy a build, I get the option to fix the issue of not having a valid signing - this generates an iOS team provisioning profile for the bundle id.
So far have found this is fine for testing - we distribute ourselves not using the app store.
If anyone would be able to give me a heads up on whether this is an okay method, or whether I will need to generate a new certificate for distribution in case we do use the app store for distribution.
If you still have access to your previous computer, you can export as p12 the private key you used to generate the Apple certificate.
Go to keychain, select the iOS certificate and right click to export it. Then import it to your new computer and you do not need to generate new certificates.
what you need to do is to remake the developer and distribution certificates for your new mac and install it then, you update your provision profile with the new certificate, reinstall it and everything works
PS: for remake your developer and distribution certificates you have to go in the keychan
Certificate Assistant > Request a Certificate From a Certificate Authority..
then add your email and common Name, check Saved to disk. Finally Into the developer web site you remove your old certificates and create the new one with the new file that you have in the disk.
Did you export from Xcode → Preferences → Accounts like Apple's guide suggests?
Did you also export your private key from the keychain? I have seen this issue before, and that was resolved by exporting and importing the private key.
If you do want to distribute on App Store later on you will definitely need to import a valid certificate, yes.
here you can find a solution or ask your problem to a developers Apple support:
https://developer.apple.com/support/
Other way you can call the developer support center here:
https://developer.apple.com/contact/phone.php
I have the following problem which I could not find a solution for anywhere. Basically, we have a company developer account (not enterprise) and so in order to submit our app, I requested from our team lead to send me the distribution certificate and create and send me a distribution provisioning profile.
With the developer profile, everything works good, but when I installed the cert and the provisioning profile, I did not see the distribution profile on Xcode, and nor do I have a private key under the dist cert in the keychain.
Does anyone know how to solve this? I read in diff places that I will need to revoke the certificate and create a new one, but I can't really do that since we have a bunch of apps in the company and I can't revoke it for everyone.
Ahh this is a common issue, The solution is simple:
Who ever created the developer credentials originally needs to go to the keychain on their computer and right click on the key(s) for private and public and export the key to a file.
Then you just download that file on your computer and open it, and it will be added to your keychain.
You need to have both the private key (.pem file) and the certificate for your provisioning profiles.
As long as you still have access to the mac which was used to generate the original distribution certificate it's very simple.
Just use that mac's Keychain Access application to export both the certificate and the private key. Select both using shift or command and right click to export to a .p12 file.
Attached a screenshot to make it very clear.
On your mac, import that .p12 file and you are good to go (just make sure you have a valid provisioning profile).
To add on to others' answers, if you don't have access to that private key anymore it's fairly simple to get back up and running:
revoke your active certificate in the provisioning portal
create new developer certificate (keychain access/.../request for csr...etc.)
download and install a new certificate
create a new provisioning profile for existing app id (on provisioning portal)
download and install new provisioning profile and in the build, settings set the appropriate code signing identities
Delete the existing one from KeyChain, get and add the .p12 file to your mac from where the certificate was created.
To get .p12 from source Mac, go to KeyChain, expand the certificate, select both and export 2 items. This will save .p12 file in your location:
For person who are afraid on re-creating AppStore distribution certificate Apple documentation says:
Important: Re-creating your development or distribution certificates
doesn’t affect apps that you’ve submitted to the App Store nor does it
affect your ability to update them.
But it affects apps for Apple Developer Enterprise ecosystem.
I lost hours and hours to resolve this issue, but it's fixed by just restarting MAC...
In my case, I've lost all private keys in my keychain, new ones were imported correctly, but doesn't show the private key as well. The only thing that helped was generating new CertificateSigningRequest
After you changed a Mac which are not the origin one who created the disitribution certificate, you will missing the private key.Just delete the origin certificate and recreate a new one, that works for me~
When I try to upload iOS build to test flight then error was appear.
"Missing privacy key".
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 9.4.1).
Please check, Xcode created new certificate.
If you are creating your own Distribution cert, not using someone else's then this could help.
Spent quite a bit of time on this today, issues from not being able to create a SigningRequest to generating a distribution cert and not having it attached to my private key in KeyChain Access. These steps helped solve this for me.
If you are still having issues, revoke your current cert and start fresh.
Creating a new signing request
The Keychain Access > Certificate Assistant > Request a Certificate from a Certificate Authority is actually contextually aware of what you currently have selected when you launch it. Just to be sure that you aren't accidentally skewing your Request with some random selection, go to your Login Items and select the Apple Worldwide Developer item. Then launch the above Request and create the CertificateSigningRequest.certSigningRequest file.
Go to Apple Dev portal, add new distribution certificate, upload your CertificateSigningRequest.certSigningRequest file and download the newly created distribution certificate.
To import the distribution cert into your keychain, instead of just double clicking it, I recommend opening your keychain, go to "login/Certificates" area and drag and drop the cert here.
I had an issue where my cert would auto-install into the System area, instead of the login area where my private key existed and this caused my key not to be linked to the new cert.
At the Menu > Visual Studio (mac) > Preferences > Publishing > Apple Developer Accounts > [Select your apple id] > View Details > Create Certificate
To delete unused/invalid certificates, go to website: https://developer.apple.com/account/resources/certificates/list
delete any unwanted certificate there
Next is to create App ID (identifiers), go to website:
https://developer.apple.com/account/resources/identifiers/list
Next, go to website to create provisioning profiles:
https://developer.apple.com/account/resources/profiles/add
use the certificate to bind with your app id.
Next is to download the profiles:
At your mac > At the Menu > Visual Studio (mac) > Preferences > Publishing > Apple Developer Accounts > [Select your apple id] > View Details > Download All Profiles
I got into this situation ("Missing private key.") after Xcode failed to create new distribution certificate - an unknown error occurred.
Then, I struggled to obtain the private key or to generate new certificate. From the certificate manager in Xcode I got strange errors like "The passphrase you entered is wrong". But it did not even ask me for any passphrase.
What helped me was:
Revoke all not-working distribution certificates at developer.apple.com
Restart my Mac
After that, Xcode was able to create new distribution certificate and no private key was missing.
Lesson learned: Restart your Mac as much as your Windows ;)
I accessed that certificate on apple's developer website and after downloaded it I opened it. Likewise, at open I got a little window asking if I wanted to add the certificate to keychain. Just tapped "add" and the "missing private key" error was gone.
My problem was that for whatever reason, the login keychain was missing in the Keychain Access. Xcode created a new certificate and added it to the login keychain but could not use it. Restarting the computer solved my problem.
Just to shed some light on this.
After I deleted my p12 certificate from Keychain. I re-downloaded my own certificate from Apple developer portal.
I was only able to download the certificate. But to sign you need the private key as well. So you either:
export both private key and certificate from Keychain to get it.
Upload a Certificate Signing Request and generate new certificates
That certificate by itself has no value for signing purposes. My guess is that the private key is created by keychain the moment you 'request a certificate from a certificate authority' but isn't shown to you until you add its matching certificate.
Check whether you are using Login or not to add the certificates, if you are checking in System at top left hand side then we wont be able to see it.
So drag and drop the .cer into login then check you are able to get the private key or not.
I'm the creator of the key, but the key was attached to an expired Certificate.
To solve it I went to -> Xcode/Preferences/Accounts/"Account you use to archive"/Manage Certificates..
Then click on the dropdown menu with the "+" sign on the bottom left corner, and choose the type of certificate you need updated (mine was Apple Distribution).
This updated my new certificate with its key attached.
Contact with the creator of iOS Distribution key and tell to export certificate and private key, then just download and double click it to access in your keychain.
I assume you have switched device and trying to create a new certificate for your new device,
First revive the development certificate form the developers portal,
Go to xcode > preferences > accounts > select your apple id with the dev portal access > manage certificates > click on the team account > click on the little + button > click on apple distribution
Go to the apple developer portal , you can see a distribution certificate is created ,
Go to profiles create a new profile with the new certificate.
Download > install
done
An old XCode version will also cause this. I was on XCode10 (old for 2022). Updated to latest version, which resolved the issue.
I could resolve this problem by updating macOS and XCode.
I am trying to upload a new version of our application to the app store, however Xcode tells me I don't have a valid identity to sign with.
I've looked into the distribution profile and found that indeed only our company certificate is connected with this distribution profile. I need to add my personal certificate to this distribution profile, but I've not been able to find a way to do this.
Does anyone know if this is possible?
EDIT: Actually, it doesn't look like my certificate is a DISTRIBUTION certificate anyway. I suppose I'd actually need to create a new distribution certificate? Is it possible to change an existing developer certificate to also be a distribution certificate?
You cannot add a certificate to Existing Distribution or Provisioning Profile .. !! You must either
Download the original certificate the one with which the Profile is Associated OR
Create Distribution Profiles for Your Developer Certificate - the one you currently have.
Me also faced same error log from Xcode 4.3 on uploading second version of build to app store.
Then I used old version of Xcode to upload build and successfully uploaded. Here is similar post that helped me.
Xcode 4.3: Codesign operation failed (Check that the identity you selected is valid)