You can now easily request access to managed capabilities for your App IDs directly from the new Capability Requests tab in Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles > Identifiers. With this update, view available capabilities in one convenient location, check the status of your requested capabilities, and see any notes from Apple related to your requests. Learn more about capability requests.

General: Forums topic: Code Signing Forums subtopics: Code Signing > General, Code Signing > Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles, Code Signing > Notarization, Code Signing > Entitlements Forums tags: Code Signing, Signing Certificates, Provisioning Profiles, Entitlements Developer Account Help — This document is good in general but, in particular, the Reference section is chock-full of useful information, including the names and purposes of all certificate types issued by Apple Developer web site, tables of which capabilities are supported by which distribution models on iOS and macOS, and information on how to use managed capabilities. Developer > Support > Certificates covers some important policy issues Bundle Resources > Entitlements documentation TN3125 Inside Code Signing: Provisioning Profiles — This includes links to the other technotes in the Inside Code Signing series. WWDC 2021 Session 10204 Distribute apps in Xcode with cloud signing Certificate Signing Requests Explained forums post --deep Considered Harmful forums post Don’t Run App Store Distribution-Signed Code forums post Resolving errSecInternalComponent errors during code signing forums post Finding a Capability’s Distribution Restrictions forums post Signing code with a hardware-based code-signing identity forums post New Capabilities Request Tab in Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles forums post Isolating Code Signing Problems from Build Problems forums post Investigating Third-Party IDE Code-Signing Problems forums post Determining if an entitlement is real forums post Mac code signing: Forums tag: Developer ID Creating distribution-signed code for macOS documentation Packaging Mac software for distribution documentation Placing Content in a Bundle documentation Embedding nonstandard code structures in a bundle documentation Embedding a command-line tool in a sandboxed app documentation Signing a daemon with a restricted entitlement documentation Defining launch environment and library constraints documentation WWDC 2023 Session 10266 Protect your Mac app with environment constraints TN2206 macOS Code Signing In Depth archived technote — This doc has mostly been replaced by the other resources linked to here but it still contains a few unique tidbits and it’s a great historical reference. Manual Code Signing Example forums post The Care and Feeding of Developer ID forums post TestFlight, Provisioning Profiles, and the Mac App Store forums post For problems with notarisation, see Notarisation Resources. For problems with the trusted execution system, including Gatekeeper, see Trusted Execution Resources. Share and Enjoy — Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

This issue keeps cropping up on the forums and so I decided to write up a single post with all the details. If you have questions or comments: If you were referred here from an existing thread, reply on that thread. If not, feel free to start a new thread. Use whatever topic and subtopic is appropriate for your question, but also add the Entitlements tag so that I see it. Share and Enjoy — Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com" Determining if an entitlement is real In recent months there’s been a spate of forums threads involving ‘hallucinated’ entitlements. This typically pans out as follows: The developer, or an agent working on behalf of the developer, changes their .entitlements file to claim an entitlement that’s not real. That is, the entitlement key is a value that is not, and never has been, supported in any way. Xcode’s code signing machinery tries to find or create a provisioning profile to authorise this claim. That’s impossible, because the entitlement isn’t a real entitlement. Xcode reports this as a code signing error. The developer misinterprets that error [1] in one of two ways: As a generic Xcode code signing failure, and so they start a forums thread asking about how to fix that problem. As an indication that the entitlement is managed — that is, requires authorisation from Apple to use — and so they start a forums thread asking how to request such authorisation. The fundamental problem is step 1. Once you start claiming entitlements that aren’t real, you’re on a path to confusion. Note If you’re curious about how provisioning profiles authorise entitlement claims, read TN3125 Inside Code Signing: Provisioning Profiles. There are a couple of ways to check whether an entitlement is real. My preferred option is to create a new test project and use Xcode’s Signing & Capabilities editor to add the corresponding capability to it. Then look at what Xcode did. You might find that Xcode claimed a different entitlement, or added an Info.plist key, or did nothing at all. IMPORTANT If you can’t find the correct capability in the Signing & Capabilities editor, it’s likely that this feature is available to all apps, that is, it’s not gated by an entitlement or anything else. Another thing you can do is search the documentation. The vast majority of real entitlements are documented in Bundle Resources > Entitlements. IMPORTANT When you search for documentation, focus on the Apple documentation. If, for example, you search the Apple Developer Forums, you might be mislead by other folks who are similarly confused. If you find that you’re mistakenly trying to claim a hallucinated entitlement, the fix is trivial: Remove it from your .entitlements file so that your app starts to build again. Then add the capability using Xcode’s Signing & Capabilities editor. This will do the right thing. If you continue to have problems, feel free to ask for help here on the forums. See the top of this post for advice on how to do that. [1] It’d be nice if the Xcode errors were more clear in this case (r. 155327166). Commonly Hallucinated Entitlements This section lists some of the more commonly hallucinated entitlements: com.apple.developer.push-notifications — The correct entitlement is aps-environment (com.apple.developer.aps-environment on macOS), documented here. There’s also the remote-notification value in the UIBackgroundModes property. com.apple.developer.in-app-purchase — There’s no entitlement for in-app purchase. Rather, in-app purchase is available to all apps with an explicit App ID (as opposed to a wildcard App ID). com.apple.InAppPurchase — Likewise. com.apple.developer.app-groups — The correct entitlement is com.apple.security.application-groups, documented here. And if you’re working on the Mac, see App Groups: macOS vs iOS: Working Towards Harmony. com.apple.developer.background-modes — Background modes are controlled by the UIBackgroundModes key in your Info.plist, documented here. UIBackgroundModes — See the previous point. com.apple.developer.voip-push-notification — There’s no entitlement for this. VoIP is gated by the voip value in the UIBackgroundModes property. com.apple.developer.family-controls.user-authorization — The correct entitlement is com.apple.developer.family-controls, documented here. IMPORTANT As explained in the docs, this entitlement is available to all developers during development but you must request authorisation for distribution. com.apple.developer.device-activity — The DeviceActivity framework has the same restrictions as Family Controls. com.apple.developer.managed-settings — If you’re trying to use the ManagedSettings framework, that has the same restrictions as Family Controls. If you’re trying to use the ManagedApp framework, that’s not gated by an entitlement. com.apple.developer.callkit.call-directory — There’s no entitlement for the Call Directory app extension feature. com.apple.developer.nearby-interaction — There’s no entitlement for the Nearby interaction framework. com.apple.developer.secure-enclave — On iOS and its child platforms, there’s no entitlement required to use the Secure Enclave. For macOS specifically, any program that has access to the data protection keychain also has access to the Secure Enclave [1]. See TN3137 On Mac keychain APIs and implementations for more about the data protection keychain. com.apple.developer.networking.configuration — If you’re trying to configure the Wi-Fi network on iOS, the correct entitlement is com.apple.developer.networking.HotspotConfiguration, documented here. [1] While technically these are different features, they are closely associated and it turns out that, if you have access to the data protection keychain, you also have access to the SE. Revision History 2025-09-05 Added com.apple.developer.device-activity. 2025-09-02 First posted.

如果你的 App 执行设备端收据验证，请确保你的 App 支持 SHA-256 算法。 我的APP接入了apple内购，我需要如何验证我的app支持 SHA-256 算法呢？

Hi Everyone, Just a quick, and what is probably a really simple question. Do I require a 'Paid' Apple Developer account if I just wish to notarise my application for use on my local network. I don't see myself needing to use the App Store in the near future. I know I can manually add the app and authorise it, but I'd like to avoid this. Kindly Ryn

The mentioned way of setting up complications does not work. We can't create the identifier according to the guideline mentioned in the WWDC session. https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2020/10049/?time=1021 Timestamp: 17:04 Error: An attribute in the provided entity has invalid value An App ID with Identifier '.watchkitapp.complication' is not available. Please enter a different string. To clarify - the non masked identifier is not used on another property inside our dev program. Without creating the identifier our tests result in not working push notifications. Error message while testing: discarded as application was not registered. Is the way mentioned in the WWDC session still valid? BR

We notarize all of our apps as part of our nightly build. Every few weeks Apple changes something in the developer agreement, and therefore require the primary account holder to accept the new terms. However, this means our nightly builds break until the terms are accepted, which is a true pain in the ***. Is there some way to tell notarytool to force the notarization? Or tell the lawyers to chill tf out? This seems to happen every 2-4 weeks.

I am writing to follow up on my request for Family Control permission, which I submitted through the appropriate form over a week ago. Unfortunately, I have not yet received any response or access to the requested permissions. Could you kindly provide an update on the status of my request? If any further information or action is needed from my end, please let me know.

I’m running into an issue where the com.apple.developer.storekit entitlement is not being included in provisioning profiles, even though my App ID is properly configured for In-App Purchase. Entitlements file: explicitly includes <key>com.apple.developer.storekit</key> <true/> Capability: In-App Purchase is enabled in the Apple Developer Portal and shows as “Enabled.” What I’ve tried: Automatic signing in Xcode → profiles generated, but missing com.apple.developer.storekit Manual signing → deleted and recreated provisioning profiles multiple times; entitlement still missing. Waited several hours for possible propagation. Verified that my in-app purchase products are set up correctly. Error message: Provisioning profile "iOS Team Provisioning Profile: zu.inniu" doesn't include the com.apple.developer.storekit entitlement Question: Has anyone else encountered this? Is there a step I might be missing to get StoreKit entitlements included in provisioning profiles, or could this be a backend issue that needs escalation through Apple DTS? This is blocking me from building my app for physical devices, so any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

One code signing issue I commonly see, both here on DevForums and in my Day Job™ with DTS, is that the codesign command fails with errSecInternalComponent. This issue crops up in a wide variety of circumstances and the correct fix depends on the specific problem. This post is my attempt to clarify the potential causes of this error and help folks resolve it. If you have any questions or comments about this, please start a new thread, tagging it with Code Signing so that I see it. Share and Enjoy — Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com" Resolving errSecInternalComponent errors during code signing In some circumstances the codesign command might fail with the error errSecInternalComponent. For example: % codesign -s "Apple Development" "MyTrue" MyTrue: errSecInternalComponent This typically affects folks who are signing code in a nonstandard environment, for example, when logged into a Mac via SSH or when signing code on a continuous integration (CI) server. This post explains how to resolve such issues, starting in the simplest case, signing from Terminal app, and then going on to discuss SSH and other contexts. IMPORTANT Before going further, make sure you understand the difference between a digital identity and a certificate. See TN3161 Inside Code Signing: Certificates for the details. Test from Terminal Code signing makes extensive use of the keychain, and that’s sensitive to the execution context in which it’s running. So, the first step in resolving this problem is to test your code signing from Terminal. To start, log in to the Mac using the GUI. Note If you don’t have access to the GUI, see Working without the GUI, below. Check that Keychain Access shows that your code signing identity’s certificate is trusted. Select the certificate and look for a green checkmark with the text “This certificate is valid”. If you see a red cross with an explanatory text like “… certificate is not trusted”, follow the instructions in Fixing an untrusted code signing certificate. Note macOS 15 moved Keychain Access out of the Utilities folder. The easiest way to find and launch Keychain Access is to use Spotlight. In Terminal, run the security tool to check that your code signing identity is available: % security find-identity -p codesigning Policy: Code Signing Matching identities 1) 4E587951B705280CBB8086325CD134D4CDA04977 "Apple Development: …" 1 identities found Valid identities only 1) 4E587951B705280CBB8086325CD134D4CDA04977 "Apple Development: …" 1 valid identities found If the identity is missing from the Matching identities list, you don’t have a code signing identity to sign with. If you see your code signing identity’s certificate in the keychain, it’s possible that you’re missing its private key. See Certificate Signing Requests Explained for more about that issue. If the identity is shown in the Matching identities list but not in the Valid identities only list, see Fixing an untrusted code signing certificate. This example assumes that you’re testing with an Apple Development signing identity. If you’re using something else, you’ll see a different identity name in this list. Use that identity name in the codesign command below. Still in Terminal, make a copy of the true tool to use for this test: % cp "/usr/bin/true" "MyTrue" Try to sign it: % codesign -s "Apple Development" -f "MyTrue" MyTrue: replacing existing signature The -f flag tells codesign to replace the existing signature. This command may display one or more keychain dialogs but, once you respond to those, it should correctly sign MyTrue. If it doesn’t, skip down to the Terminal failure section at the end of this post. Eliminate keychain alerts When you signed your code in the previous section, you may have seen one of two different types of keychain alerts: Keychain unlock dialog Access control list (ACL) dialog The keychain unlock dialog looks like this: codesign wants to use the … keychain. Please enter the keychain password. Password: [ ] [Cancel] [[OK]] The keychain containing your code signing identity is locked, and you must enter the keychain password to unlock it. You rarely see this dialog when logged in via the GUI because the system automatically unlocks the login keychain when you log in. However, the underlying cause of this alert will become relevant in the next section, when you log in via SSH. The ACL dialog looks like this: codesign wants to sign using key … in your keychain. To allow this, enter the … keychain password. Password: [ ] [Always Allow] [Deny] [[Allow]] The ACL for the your code signing identity’s private key prevents codesign from using the private key without your explicit approval. If you enter your password and click Allow, codesign can use the private key once. If you click Always Allow, the system adds codesign to the private key’s ACL so that it doesn’t have to ask again. To avoid this alert in the future, enter your keychain password and click Always Allow. Now repeat the codesign command from the previous section. It will sign the code without presenting any dialogs. Test over SSH Once you can sign your code in Terminal without seeing any dialogs, it’s time to repeat that process over SSH. To start, log out of the GUI and then log in via SSH. If you’re testing on a CI system, log in to that system by running ssh from Terminal on your Mac. If you want to test on your local Mac, choose one of these options If you have a second Mac, log in to that second Mac using the GUI, launch Terminal, and then run ssh to log in to your main Mac from there. If you have an iPad, use a third-party iPad SSH app to log in to your main Mac over SSH. Use a virtualisation app to run a macOS guest that you can treat like your CI system. Once you’re logged in over SSH, repeat the signing command from the earlier section: % codesign -s "Apple Development" -f "MyTrue" MyTrue: replacing existing signature MyTrue: errSecInternalComponent This fails because: The system locked the keychain when you logged out of the GUI. Logging in via SSH does not unlock the keychain. When codesign tries to use your code signing identity, the system attempts to present the keychain unlock dialog. That fails because you’re logged in via SSH and thus don’t have access to the GUI. The system returns the errSecInternalComponent error to codesign, which reports it to you. To fix this, unlock your keychain using the security tool: % security unlock-keychain password to unlock default: KEYCHAIN_PASSWORD % codesign -s "Apple Development" -f "MyTrue" MyTrue: replacing existing signature IMPORTANT This assumes that your code signing identity is in your login keychain. If it’s in some other keychain, read the security man page to learn how to unlock a specific keychain. Best practice is to store both parts of your code signing identity (the certificate and the private key) in the same keychain. If you split the identity across two keychains, unlock the keychain that contains the private key. Test your CI job Once you have everything working on your CI system over SSH, try running exactly the same commands in your CI job. If your CI system manages user contexts correctly, those commands should just work. If they don’t, discuss this with your CI vendor. Note macOS has a complex execution context model. For background on this, see the Execution Contexts section of Technote 2083 Daemons and Agents. Some CI systems don’t correctly establish a user context when running jobs. For example, they might switch the traditional Unix execution context — the EUID, RUID, and so on — but not the security context. This mixed execution context causes problems for the keychain, which relies on the security context. Avoid doing code signing work as root. Some folks run everything as root because they think it’ll avoid problems. When working with the keychain the opposite is true: Running as root often causes more problems than it solves. These problems are most likely to show up when you use sudo, which creates a mixed execution context. Working without the GUI The instructions above assume you have access to the GUI so that you can test and resolve issues using GUI tools like Keychain Access. However, many CI systems don’t give you access to the GUI; at best you might have interactive access using SSH. Note If you CI system allows remote access using a screen sharing protocol, use that rather than messing around with the instructions here. If you don’t have access to the GUI of the machine on which you’re signing code, there are three issues to deal with: Avoiding the keychain unlock dialog Avoiding the ACL dialog Investigating an untrusted code signing certificate issue To unlock the keychain, use the unlock-keychain subcommand of the security tool, discussed in the Test over SSH section earlier. When logged in with the GUI, you can respond to ACL dialog by clicking Always Allow. This prevents that dialog showing up again. However, if you don’t have GUI access there’s no way to click that button. To get around this, import your signing identity and set its ACL to allow codesign to use it without extra authorisation. To do this, first unlock the keychain: % security unlock-keychain password to unlock default: KEYCHAIN_PASSWORD Then use the security tool to import the PKCS#12 file: % security import IDENTITY.p12 -T /usr/bin/codesign -P P12_PASSWORD 1 identity imported. Note the -T option, which adds codesign to the private key’s ACL. Finally, modify the partition list to allow access by Apple code: % security set-key-partition-list -S "apple:" -l "Apple Development: …" This example assumes you’re using an Apple Development signing identity to test with. If you’re using something else, replace Apple Development: … with that identity name. Finally, investigating an untrusted code signing certificate issue remotely is quite challenging. Your best option here is to set up a local test environment, run your investigation in that environment, and then apply the results to your CI environment. There are two good choices for your local test environment: Use a virtualisation app to create a ‘clean’ macOS guest, one that’s never seen your code signing setup before. Use System Settings > Users & Groups to create a new local user account and do your testing there. The first option is best because you can easily restore your VM to a clean state between tests. When running through the process described in Fixing an untrusted code signing certificate, you might end up performing two different remedial actions: Importing an intermediate Reseting trust settings. Once you understand these remediations, you need to apply them to your CI system. The first one is easy: To import an intermediate, run security with the import subcommand: % security import INTERMEDIATE.cer 1 certificate imported. Resetting trust settings is more of a challenge. It’s probably possible to do this with the security tool but, honestly, if you think that your CI system has messed up trust settings it’s easiest to throw it away and start again from scratch. Terminal failure The bulk of this post assumes that the process described in the Test from Terminal section works. If it doesn’t, something weird is happening and you should apply the following diagnostic suggestions. The first is to create a new local user account on your Mac — using System Settings > Users & Groups — and then retry there. The goal of this test is to isolate: A problem that affects your Mac as a whole From a problem that’s tied to your user account If the problem is with your user account, switch back to your original account and run: % security dump-trust-settings SecTrustSettingsCopyCertificates: No Trust Settings were found. In most cases this should report that no trust settings were found. If it report trust setting overrides, remove them. See Check for a trust settings override in Fixing an untrusted code signing certificate. If that doesn’t resolve the issue, something else is afoot and I recommend that you seek dedicated help per the start of this post. Revision History 2024-10-05 Added the Terminal failure section. Made other minor editorial changes. 2022-08-12 Extended the unlock-keychain explanation to cover the split identity issue. 2022-08-11 First posted.

I regularly see folks run into problems with their Developer ID signing identities. Historically I pointed them to my posts on this thread, but I’ve decided to collect these ideas together in one place. If you have questions or comments, start a new thread here on DevForums and tag it with Developer ID so that I see it. IMPORTANT Nothing I write here on DevForums is considered official documentation. It’s just my personal ramblings based on hard-won experience. There is a bunch of official documentation that covers the topics I touch on here, including: Xcode documentation Xcode Help Developer Account Help Developer > Support > Certificates For a lot more information about code signing, see the Code Signing Resources pinned post. Share and Enjoy — Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com" The Care and Feeding of Developer ID Most Apple signing assets are replaceable. For example, if you accidentally lose access to your Apple Development signing identity, it’s a minor inconvenience. Just use the Developer website to revoke your previous certificate and create a replacement. Or have Xcode do that for you. IMPORTANT If you don’t understand the difference between a certificate and a digital identity, and hence signing identity, read Certificate Signing Requests Explained before reading this post. Some signing assets are precious. Losing access to such assets has significant consequences. Foremost amongst those are Developer ID signing identities. These allow you to sign Mac products that ship independently. Anyone with access to your Developer ID signing identity can sign code as you. This has a number of consequences, both for you and for your relationship with Apple. Identify a Developer ID Signing Identity A Developer ID signing identity consists of two parts: the certificate and the private key. There are two different flavours, identifiable by the subject name in the certificate: Developer ID Application — This is named Developer ID Application: TTT, where TTT identifies your team. Use this to sign code and disk images. Developer ID Installer — This is named Developer ID Installer: TTT, where TTT identifies your team. Use this to sign installer packages. Note If you do KEXT development, there’s a third flavour, namely a KEXT-enabled Developer ID Application signing identity. For more details, see KEXT Code Signing Problems. This post focuses on traditional signing identities, where you manage the private key. Xcode Cloud introduced cloud signing, where signing identities are “stored securely in the cloud”. These identities have the Managed suffix in Certificates, Identifiers, and Profiles. For example, Developer ID Application Managed is the cloud signing equivalent of Developer ID Application. To learn more about cloud signing, watch WWDC 2021 Session 10204 Distribute apps in Xcode with cloud signing. To identify these certificates ‘in the wild’, see Identifying a Cloud Managed Signing Certificate. Limit Access to Developer ID Anyone with your Developer ID signing identity can sign code as you. Given that, be careful to limit access to these signing identities. This is true both for large organisations and small developers. In a large organisation, ensure that only folks authorised to ship code on behalf of your organisation have access to your Developer ID signing identities. Most organisations have some sort of release process that they use to build, test, and authorise a release. This often involves a continuous integration (CI) system. Restrict CI access to only those folks involved in the release process. Even if you’re a small developer with no formal release process, you can still take steps to restrict access to Developer ID signing identities. See Don’t Leak Your Private Key, below. In all cases, don’t use your Developer ID signing identities for day-to-day development. That’s what Apple Development signing identities are for. Create Developer ID Signing Identities as the Account Holder Because Developer ID signing identities are precious, the Developer website will only let the Account Holder create them. For instructions on how to do this, see Developer Account Help > Create certificates > Create Developer ID certificates. For more information about programme roles, see Developer > Support > Program Roles. IMPORTANT In an Organization team it’s common for the Account Holder to be non-technical. They may need help getting this done. For hints and tips on how to avoid problems while doing this, see Don’t Lose Your Private Key and Don’t Leak Your Private Key, both below. Limit the Number of Developer ID Signing Identities You Create Don’t create Developer ID signing identities unnecessarily. Most folks only need to create one. Well, one Developer ID Application and maybe one Developer ID Installer. A large organisation might need more, perhaps one for each sub-unit, but that’s it. There are two reasons why this is important: The more you have, the more likely it is for one to get into the wrong hands. Remember that anyone with your Developer ID signing identity can sign code as you. The Developer website limits you to 5 Developer ID certificates. Note I can never remember where this limit is actually documented, so here’s the exact quote from this page: You can create up to five Developer ID Application certificates and up to five Developer ID Installer certificates using either your developer account or Xcode. Don’t Lose Your Private Key There are two standard processes for creating a Developer ID signing identity: Developer website — See Developer Account Help > Create certificates > Create Developer ID certificates. Xcode — See Xcode Help > Maintaining signing assets > Manage signing certificates. Both processes implicitly create a private key in your login keychain. This makes it easy to lose your private key. For example: If you do this on one Mac and then get a new Mac, you might forget to move the private key to the new Mac. If you’re helping your Organization team’s Account Holder to create a Developer ID signing identity, you might forget to export the private key from their login keychain. It also makes it easy to accidentally leave a copy of the private key on a machine that doesn’t need it; see Don’t Leak Your Private Key, below, for specific advice on that front. Every time you create a Developer ID signing identity, it’s a good idea to make an independent backup of it. For advice on how to do that, see Back Up Your Signing Identities, below. That technique is also useful if you need to copy the signing identity to a continuous integration system. If you think you’ve lost the private key for a Developer ID signing identity, do a proper search for it. Finding it will save you a bunch of grief. You might be able to find it on your old Mac, in a backup, in a backup for your old Mac, and so on. For instructions on how to extract your private key from a general backup, see Recover a Signing Identity from a Mac Backup. If you’re absolutely sure that you previous private key is lost, use the Developer website to create a replacement signing identity. If the Developer website won’t let you create any more because you’ve hit the limit discussed above, talk to Developer Programs Support. Go to Apple > Developer > Contact Us and follow the path Development and Technical > Certificates, Identifiers, and Provisioning Profiles. Don’t Leak Your Private Key Anyone with your Developer ID signing identity can sign code as you. Thus, it’s important to take steps to prevent its private key from leaking. A critical first step is to limit access to your Developer ID signing identities. For advice on that front, see Limit Access to Developer ID, above. In an Organization team, only the Account Holder can create Developer ID signing identities. When they do this, a copy of the identity’s private key will most likely end up in their login keychain. Once you’ve exported the signing identity, and confirmed that everything is working, make sure to delete that copy of the private key. Some organisations have specific rules for managing Developer ID signing identities. For example, an organisation might require that the private key be stored in a hardware token, which prevents it from being exported. Setting that up is a bit tricky, but it offers important security benefits. Even without a hardware token, there are steps you can take to protect your Developer ID signing identity. For example, you might put it in a separate keychain, one with a different password and locking policy than your login keychain. That way signing code for distribution will prompt you to unlock the keychain, which reminds you that this is a significant event and ensures that you don’t do it accidentally. If you believe that your private key has been compromised, follow the instructions in the Compromised Certificates section of Developer > Support > Certificates. IMPORTANT Don’t go down this path if you’ve simply lost your private key. Back Up Your Signing Identities Given that Developer ID signing identities are precious, consider making an independent backup of them. To back up a signing identity to a PKCS#12 (.p12) file: Launch Keychain Access. At the top, select My Certificates. On the left, select the keychain you use for signing identities. For most folks this is the login keychain. Select the identity. Choose File > Export Items. In the file dialog, select Personal Information Exchange (.p12) in the File Format popup. Enter a name, navigate to your preferred location, and click Save. You might be prompted to enter the keychain password. If so, do that and click OK. You will be prompted to enter a password to protect the identity. Use a strong password and save this securely in a password manager, corporate password store, on a piece of paper in a safe, or whatever. You might be prompted to enter the keychain password again. If so, do that and click Allow. The end result is a .p12 file holding your signing identity. Save that file in a secure location, and make sure that you have a way to connect it to the password you saved in step 9. Remember to backup all your Developer ID signing identities, including the Developer ID Installer one if you created it. To restore a signing identity from a backup: Launch Keychain Access. Choose File > Import Items. In the open sheet, click Show Options. Use the Destination Keychain popup to select the target keychain. Navigate to and select the .p12 file, and then click Open. Enter the .p12 file’s password and click OK. If prompted, enter the destination keychain password and click OK. Recover a Signing Identity from a Mac Backup If you didn’t independently backup your Developer ID signing identity, you may still be able to recover it from a general backup of your Mac. To start, work out roughly when you created your Developer ID signing identity: Download your Developer ID certificate from the Developer website. In the Finder, Quick Look it. The Not Valid Before field is the date you’re looking for. Now it’s time to look in your backups. The exact details depend on the backup software you’re using, but the basic process runs something like this: Look for a backup taken shortly after the date you determined above. In that backup, look for the file ~/Library/Keychains/login.keychain. Recover that to a convenient location, like your desktop. Don’t put it in ~/Library/Keychains because that’ll just confuse things. Rename it to something unique, like login-YYYY-MM-DD.keychain, where YYYY-MM-DD is the date of the backup. In Keychain Access, choose File > Add Keychain and, in the resulting standard file panel, choose that .keychain file. On the left, select login-YYYY-MM-DD. Chose File > Unlock Keychain “login-YYYY-MM-DD“. In the resulting password dialog, enter your login password at the date of the backup. At the top, select My Certificates. Look through the list of digital identities to find the Developer ID identity you want. If you don’t see the one you’re looking for, see Further Recovery Tips below. Export it using the process described at the start of Back Up Your Signing Identities. Once you’re done, remove the keychain from Keychain Access: On the left, select the login-YYYY-MM-DD keychain. Choose File > Delete Keychain “login-YYYY-MM-DD”. In the confirmation alert, click Remove Reference. The login-YYYY-MM-DD.keychain is now just a file. You can trash it, keep it, whatever, at your discretion. This process creates a .p12 file. To work with that, import it into your keychain using the process described at the end of Back Up Your Signing Identities. IMPORTANT Keep that .p12 file as your own independent backup of your signing identity. Further Recovery Tips If, in the previous section, you can’t find the Developer ID identity you want, there are a few things you might do: Look in a different backup. If your account has more than one keychain, look in your other keychains. If you have more than one login account, look at the keychains for your other accounts. If you have more than one Mac, look at the backups for your other Macs. The login-YYYY-MM-DD keychain might have the private key but not the certificate. Add your Developer ID certificate to that keychain to see if it pairs with a private key. Revision History 2025-03-28 Excised the discussion of Xcode’s import and export feature because that was removed in Xcode 16. 2025-02-20 Added some clarification to the end of Don’t Leak Your Private Key. 2023-10-05 Added the Recover a Signing Identity from a Mac Backup and Further Recovery Tips sections. 2023-06-23 Added a link to Identifying a Cloud Managed Signing Certificate. 2023-06-21 First posted.

Hi, At work, we've done some development on an Apple Vision Pro. On the project, we used object tracking to track an object in 3D and found the default tracking refresh rate (I believe 5Hz)to be too slow so we applied for enterprise APIs so we could change it. At some point, in the capabilities (as a beginner to Swift and the Apple development environment) I noticed that's where you enable the Object Tracking Parameter Adjustment API and I did so, before hearing back about whether we got access to the enterprise API's and the license file that comes with it. So I setup the re-fresh rate to 30Hz and logged the settings of the ObjectTrackingProvider, showing it was set at 30Hz and felt like it was better than the default when we ran our app. In the Xcode runtime logs, there was no warning or error saying that the license file for the enterprise API was not found (and I don't think we heard back from Apple if they had granted our request or not - even if they did I think the license would be expired by now). Fast forward to today, I was running the sample code of the Main Camera access for VisionOS linked in the official developer documentation and when I ran the project in Xcode, I noticed in the logs that it wanted an enterprise license and that's why it wasn't running as expected in the immersive space. We've since applied for the Enterprise API for Main Camera Access. I'm now confused - did I mistakenly believe the object tracking refresh rate was set to 30Hz but it actually wasn't due to the lack of a license file/being granted access to the enterprise APIs? It seemed to be running as expected without a license file. Is Object tracking Parameter Adjustment API handled with different permissions than Main Camera Access API even though they are both enterprise APIs? This is all for internal development and not planning on distributing an app but I find the behaviour to be confusing between the different enterprise API? Does anyone have more insight as I find the developer notes on the enterprise APIs to be a bit sparse.

This post is part of a cluster of posts related to the trusted execution system. If you found your way here directly, I recommend that you start at the top. Share and Enjoy — Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com" Resolving Gatekeeper Problems Gatekeeper strives to ensure that only trusted software runs on a user’s Mac. It’s important that your code pass Gatekeeper. If not, you’re likely to lose a lot of customers, and your users’ hard-won trust. There are four common Gatekeeper problems: App blocked by a dangling load command path Broken code signature Lack of notarisation Command-line tool blocked by Gatekeeper The first problem is by far the most common. For the details, see Resolving Gatekeeper Problems Caused by Dangling Load Command Paths. For general information about Gatekeeper, read Apple > Developer > Signing Mac Software with Developer ID and Apple > Support > Safely open apps on your Mac. IMPORTANT This post focuses on Developer ID-signed code. Gatekeeper should not block App Store apps. If an app downloaded from the App Store fails to run, it’s likely to be some other trusted execution issue. For more about this, read Resolving Trusted Execution Problems. macOS 14 introduced gktool, a very minimal interface to Gatekeeper. Run the tool with the help argument to learn more: % gktool help Verify Your Signature A good first step in any Gatekeeper investigation is to verify that your code is signed correctly. Use the codesign tool for this: % codesign -v -vvv --strict --deep MyApp.app The -vvv options increase verbosity to the point where codesign will give you useful diagnostics. For example: % codesign -v -vvv --strict --deep "Munged.app" Munged.app: a sealed resource is missing or invalid file added: …/Munged.app/Contents/Resources/names/Adam.txt file modified: …/Munged.app/Contents/Resources/names/Morgan.txt file missing: …/Munged.app/Contents/Resources/names/Rhonda.txt This app was changed after it was signed in three different ways: Adam.txt was added. Morgan.txt was modified. Rhonda.txt was removed. You might see some results that make no sense. For example: Start with an app with a valid code signature: % codesign -v -vvv --strict --deep "NotNormal.app" NotNormal.app: valid on disk NotNormal.app: satisfies its Designated Requirement Use the Finder to create a zip archive (File > Compress). Use the Finder to unpack that archive. Check the code signature of the unpacked file: % codesign -v -vvv --strict --deep "NotNormal 2.app" NotNormal 2.app: a sealed resource is missing or invalid file added: …/NotNormal 2.app/Contents/Resources/names/Zoë Schrödinger.txt file missing: …/NotNormal 2.app/Contents/Resources/names/Zoë Schrödinger.txt There are two things to note here. First, just compressing and decompressing the app broke its code signature. Weird! Second, look at the error messages. It seems that the Zoë Schrödinger.txt file is was both added and removed. Weirder! To see what’s going on here you have to look at a hex dump of the file name: % ls "NotNormal.app/Contents/Resources/names" | xxd 00000000: 5a6f c3ab 2053 6368 726f cc88 6469 6e67 Zo.. Schro..ding 00000010: 6572 2e74 7874 0a er.txt. % ls "NotNormal 2.app/Contents/Resources/names" | xxd 00000000: 5a6f 65cc 8820 5363 6872 6fcc 8864 696e Zoe.. Schro..din 00000010: 6765 722e 7478 740a ger.txt. The names are not the same! The app started out with the ë in precomposed form and the ö in decomposed form. Compressing and decompressing the app converted the ë to its decomposed form, and that change broke the code signature. Programs that deal with Unicode are expected to ignore differences in normalisation. Sadly, Apple’s code signing implementation missed that memo (r. 68829319). For more details see this post but the executive summary is that it’s best to stick to ASCII when naming files in a bundle. Identify a Notarisation Problem Gatekeeper requires that your app be notarised. If not, it will block the execution of your app with a generic, user-level message. If you find your app blocked by Gatekeeper, check if this is a notarisation issue by looking in the system log for an entry like this: type: info time: 2022-05-11 14:57:21.812176 -0700 process: syspolicyd subsystem: com.apple.syspolicy category: default message: ticket not available: 2/2/8b7410713591e6c79ea98f0132136f0faa55d22a Note If the ticket details show as <private>, enable private data in the system log. For information on how to do that, see Recording Private Data in the System Log. For general information about the system log, see Your Friend the System Log. The long hex number is the code directory hash, or cdhash, of the offending code. In this example, it’s the cdhash of the app itself: % codesign -d -vvv /Applications/NotNotarised.app … CDHash=8b7410713591e6c79ea98f0132136f0faa55d22a … However, in some cases it may be the cdhash of some library referenced by the app. For more information about cdhashes, see TN3126 Inside Code Signing: Hashes. Resolve a Notarisation Problem The obvious cause of this problem is that you haven’t notarised your app. For information on how to do that, see Notarizing macOS Software Before Distribution. If you have notarised your app and yet you still see this problem, something more subtle is happening. For example, your app might reference a dynamic library that wasn’t seen by the notary service. To investigate this: Fetch the notary log for your app. For advice on that, see Fetching the Notary Log. Confirm that the notary log matches the app you installed. Look in the notary log for the sha256 property. Its value is a SHA-256 hash of the file received by the notary service. Check that this matches the SHA-256 hash of the file you used to install your app. If not, see Hash Mismatch, below. Search the notary log for the cdhash value from the Gatekeeper log message. If the notary log doesn’t contain that cdhash, that code wasn’t included in the notarised ticket. It’s possible that you failed to submit the code to the notary service, that it was switched out with a different version after you notarised your app, that it was package in some way that the notary service couldn’t see it, or that something went wrong within the notary service. Hash Mismatch If you stapled your notarised ticket to the file used to install your app then the hashes in step 2 of the previous section won’t match. What to do depends on the file type: If the file used to install your app was a zip archive (.zip), you definitely have the wrong file. Zip archives don’t support stapling. If the file used to install your app was a signed disk image (.dmg), compare the disk image’s cdhash with the cdhash for the disk image in the notary log. If those match, you know you’re working with the same disk image. To dump a disk image’s cdhash, run the codesign tool as follows: % codesign -d -vvv DISK_IMAGE … CDHash=d963af703ac2e54af6609e9ad309abee7b66fae2 … Replace DISK_IMAGE with the path to your disk image. If the file used to install your app was a disk image but it wasn’t signed, switch to a signed disk image. It’s generally a better option. If the file used to install your app was an installer package (.pkg), there’s no good way to know if this is the correct package. In this case, modify your notarisation workflow to retain a copy of the file before it was modified by stapler. Tool Blocked by Gatekeeper If your product includes a command-line tool, you might notice this behaviour: When you double click the tool in Finder, it’s blocked by Gatekeeper. When you run the tool from within Terminal, it works. This is a known bug in macOS (r. 58097824). The issue is that, when you double click a tool in the Finder, it doesn’t run Gatekeeper’s standard execution logic. Rather, the Finder passes the tool to Terminal as a document and that opens a window (and associated shell) in which to run that document. This triggers Gatekeeper’s document logic, and that logic always blocks the tool. There are two ways around this: Embed your tool in an application. If the user runs the application first, Gatekeeper runs its normal application check. If the user allows the app to run, Gatekeeper records that decision and applies it to the app and any code within the app, including your tool. Install your tool using an installer package. When the user goes to install the package, Gatekeeper checks it. Assuming that check passes, Gatekeeper does no further checks on the content it installed. Revision History 2024-11-11 Added a mention of gktool. 2022-05-20 Added the Verify Your Signature section. Made other minor editorial changes.

Hey all, I'm experiencing an error, when trying to upload my app to the App Store using Transporter. I build my app with fvm flutter build ipa --release. When I try to upload this, I get the following error: I have already done a rebuild and checked my Provision Profile and certificate

Hey everyone, I was granted access to Family Controls (Distribution) for my main App ID The entitlement is visible and enabled in the App ID configuration. I’ve successfully created and used a provisioning profile that injects com.apple.developer.family-controls for the main app. ✅ However, the issue is with an extension target under the same parent App ID and all others Despite enabling the Family Controls (Development) capability in this extension’s App ID config, every new provisioning profile I generate for the extension fails to include the entitlement. I’ve confirmed this by: • Dumping the .mobileprovision with security cms -D → no sign of com.apple.developer.family-controls • Recreating the profile multiple times (Development and Distribution) • Ensuring the entitlement is toggled on in the portal • Validating the parent app profile does include it ⸻ ❗Question: Is there a known issue where Family Controls doesn’t get injected into extension App IDs even after team approval? Or is there an extra step I need to take to get this entitlement injected properly into provisioning profiles for app extensions?

Runner has conflicting provisioning settings. Runner is automatically signed, but code signing identity Apple Development: my dev account has been manually specified. Set the code signing identity value to "Apple Development" in the build settings editor, or switch to manual signing in the Signing & Capabilities editor. How to fix it nah

Hi, I am trying to make my app build on GitHub Action CI pipeline. App builds fine on xcode on my mac. For CI I am using command line xcode. I am getting following error: No profiles for 'com.snslocation.electricians-now' were found: Xcode couldn't find any iOS App Development provisioning profiles matching 'com.snslocation.electricians-now'. Automatic signing is disabled and unable to generate a profile. To enable automatic signing, pass -allowProvisioningUpdates to xcodebuild. (in target 'myapp' from project 'myapp') You can see full log of the build here: https://github.com/nbulatovi/ElectriciansNow/actions/runs/12603115423/job/35127512689 The provisioning profile is present, and verified in the previous steps in the pipeline, however xcode refuses to find it. If I add -allowProvisioningUpdates error stays. I tried manually mapping app id to profile name. Is there a way to get any debug log from xcode profile search, to see why is it not picking up the correct profile? Or can you maybe help in some other way? xcode version is 15.4, iOS SDK 17.5

No matter how many times I download what seems to be a cert for Mac App Distribution Certificate Type Mac App Distribution When I look at its Apple Mac App Signing extension property in the keychain, it always says Apple Mac App Signing (Development) Whenever I try to use it to code sign, the signing is 'generic' which fails security checks. AI says... The certificate field Apple Mac App Signing (Development) (1.2.840.113635.100.6.1.7) indicates that the certificate is intended for development purposes. This type of certificate is used for signing macOS applications during the development and testing phases. But that is not what I am expecting to get from the certificate type Mac App Distribution. What can I do to actually get to production?

Hi All, Like many others I'm a little confused with gaining access to the family controls capability. Our app is ready to push to testflight, and we sent the request to apple last week. However only learning today that we need to request for the shield extension as well. I wanted to ask what the expected timeline is for being approved? I've seen posts here saying less than a week, and some people having to wait longer than 6 weeks. Any advise or guidance on getting approved smoothly & swiftly would be highly appreciated

I was able to setup a release test for an iOS app for distribution using a web server. It works perfectly fine for all the devices I registered for the deployment profile. However every time I try to distribute a Unity based Vision Pro application using the same process for building the package and set up for distribution it does not work. Safari only shows a message telling me: "Cannot connect to ." When trying to install the iOS app from the same server it shows the message "Do you want to install ?" and installation completes correctly. My iOS is a simple hello world app generated by Xcode. My Unity app is an AR app targeting com.apple.platform.xros. According to documentation there should not be any difference in deployment profiles/signing for iOS apps vs. visionOS apps. What am I doing wrong? Any hint is appreciated how to continue.

Hello, I went through the verification process to get the Tap to Pay on iPhone entitlement, and after a couple of corrections I was finally assured that I was granted the entitlement for production use. However, in App Store Connect, I can only see "Development" for "Provisioning Support" of the entitlement, and I'm not able to publish the app to Testflight because the profile doesn't support the entitlement (I'm using automatic code signing with XCode). Where is this going wrong? The Tap to Pay support assured me they granted the right entitlement and pointed me to the developer support. Thank you, Johannes

It has been 3 days and it is still in progress. As you can see in the history, I retried a few hours after the initial attempt, both are stuck. For what it's worth, this is my first notary attempt on this Apple Developer Account, I am aware that first-time submission can take longer. What should I do at this point? Wait another few days? Is there a human in the loop that needs to manually allow my submission? I have seen posts about this for the last 2 years. Seems like Apple is not going to do anything about it, xcrun notarytool history --keychain-profile '[redacted]' Successfully received submission history. history -------------------------------------------------- createdDate: 2024-11-30T01:59:08.408Z id: 3de4f35a-a950-4b34-8a74-21252b3e49a4 name: Notes.ai.zip status: In Progress -------------------------------------------------- createdDate: 2024-11-29T20:49:53.437Z id: 268e5416-640c-419f-b22a-efe55212b50a name: Notes.ai.zip status: In Progress