Getting a Development Provisioning Profile
A provisioning profile links your signing certificate and App ID so that you can sign apps to install and launch on iOS devices. You must have a development provisioning profile to sign apps for use with iOS Gateway version 3.4 and later.
A development provisioning profile is different from an enterprise or distribution provisioning profile. For information about types of provisioning profiles, see Maintaining Your Signing Identities and Certificates in the iOS Developer Library.
You need to have an App ID for the app you want to sign before creating a provisioning profile because the App ID is included in the profile. To learn about creating an App ID, see Creating an iOS App ID.
Step by Step: Creating Your Development Provisioning Profile
The development provisioning profile must be obtained from the online Apple Developer portal. To obtain a development provisioning profile, follow the steps below:
- Navigate to the Member Center on the Apple Developer website and log in with your Apple developer account. If you do not have an Apple developer account, you will need to create one.
- In the Member Center, click to select the Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles section, then select Provisioning Profiles > All in the left panel, under iOS, tvOS, watchOS.
- To create a provisioning profile, click the Add button (+) in the upper-right corner.
- If you're testing iOS devices, select iOS App Development as the type. If you're working with Apple TV, select tvOS App Development as the type. Click Continue.
- Select the App ID for the app you want to use with this profile from the drop-down list, then click Continue. Remember that you must create the App ID before the provisioning profile so that it will be available on this list. For information on creating the App ID, see Creating an iOS App ID.
- Select the members of your team who should have access to the development provisioning profile, then click Continue.
- Select the devices to which this development provisioning profile should apply, then click Continue.
- Name the profile, then click Generate to create the development provisioning profile.
- Download the profile on the machine where you are going to sign your applications, which should be the same machine where you have iOS Gateway and Xcode installed.
You can edit existing profiles through the Developer portal. You can also view and download profiles that are associated with your account through Xcode by going to Xcode > Preferences > Accounts.
What Do You Do with Your Provisioning Profile?
If you will be testing iOS 9 or later devices, or using iOS Gateway 3.4 or later, you need to import the development provisioning profile into Xcode on the same machine where you will run iOS Gateway. To import the profile into Xcode, double-click the downloaded file. You won't see the file open or get any confirmation from Xcode that the import was successful, although Xcode should launch on the machine.
Even if you aren't current testing iOS 9 or later devices, you might consider following these steps to import the profile into Xcode, particularly if it's a profile based on a wildcard App ID that you might want to use later as your testing needs change. You can re-download your provisioning profiles from the Apple Developer website as well as through Xcode.
Make sure you know where on the local machine you've stored the development provisioning profile. The default location is ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles. You need to browse or navigate to the profile file when you sign apps with the signing utility in iOS Gateway. For complete information about signing apps, see Signing Apps for Use with iOS Gateway.