I recently had to make a change to my Mac app where I need to add a special "Contact Notes" entitlement, so that means that I can't rely on "Automatic Code Signing" anymore. So here are the steps I took to build and distribute the app with manual code signing:
- from "Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles" from the Developer, I added entitlement to my app identifier, and then created new manual provisioning profiles (one for "macOS App Development" under Development, and one for "Mac App Store" under Distribution)
- in Xcode, added the entitlement to the Entitlements files
- in Xcode, in Signing & Capabilities, unselected the checkbox for "Automatically manage signing", and under "Provisioning Profile", for both Debug and Release builds, I chose to import the new provisioning profiles that were created
I can build and run in debug mode, and it works fine. I then created an 'archive' of the app, which also built fine, and opened up Organizer.
In Organizer, I choose the "Distribute" button, select "App Store Connect" as the distribution method, and choose "Upload" as the destination. After it prepares the archive, it shows the usual two checkboxes for "upload app symbols" and "manage version and build number", and I select Next.
Till now, everything works as expected.
Now I get the "Select certificates and Mac App Store profiles" page ... here, for the dropdowns for my app's targets, I select the correct provisioning profiles. BUT .. the "Next" button never next gets enabled, so I can't move forward! There's no error message, or anything in Console that makes sense to me. But I just can't seem to be able to select "Next" to the final step before uploading the build to App Store Connect.
When I went back and selected "Automatically manage signing" again, and build and archive, the new archive doesn't have this step again, so it works fine and goes to the final upload page.
What can I do to find out the issue that's causing this page to not validate? Can I upload the archive build through some other way (like from Terminal) that might give more information?
NEVERMIND: turns out, I needed to "Mac Installer Distribution" Certificate, which I generated from the dropbox.
