General: DevForums 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 Entitlements documentation TN3125 Inside Code Signing: Provisioning Profiles — This includes links to other technotes in the Inside Code Signing series. WWDC 2021 Session 10204 Distribute apps in Xcode with cloud signing Certificate Signing Requests Explained DevForums post --deep Considered Harmful DevForums post Don’t Run App Store Distribution-Signed Code DevForums post Resolving errSecInternalComponent errors during code signing DevForums post Finding a Capability’s Distribution Restrictions DevForums post Signing code with a hardware-based code-signing identity DevForums post Mac code signing: DevForums 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your Mac app with environment constraints TN2206 macOS Code Signing In Depth archived technote — This doc has mostly been replaced by the other resources linked to here but it still contains a few unique tidbits and it’s a great historical reference.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 DevForums post The Care and Feeding of Developer ID DevForums post TestFlight, Provisioning Profiles, and the Mac App Store DevForums 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"

I am looking for inputs to better understand MacOS entitlements. I ask this in context of OpenJDK project, which builds and ships the JDK. The build process makes uses of make tool and thus doesn't involving building through the XCode product. The JDK itself is a Java language platform providing applications a set of standard APIs. The implementation of these standard APIs internally involves calling platform specific native library functions. In this discussion, I would like to focus on the networking functions that the implementation uses. Almost all of these networking functions and syscalls that the internal implementation uses are BSD socket related. Imagine calls to socket(), connect(), getsockopt(), setsockopt(), getaddrinfo(), sendto(), listen(), accept() and several such. The JDK that's built through make is then packaged and made available for installation. The packaging itself varies, but for this discussion, I'll focus on the .tar.gz archived packaging. Within this archive there are several executables (for example: java, javac and others) and several libraries. My understanding, based on what I have read of MacOS entitlements is that, the entitlements are set on the executable and any libraries that would be loaded and used by that executable will be evaluated against the entitlements of the executable (please correct me if I misunderstand). Reading through the list of entitlements noted here https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/entitlements, the relevant entitlements that an executable (like "java") which internally invokes BSD socket related syscalls and library functions, appear to be: com.apple.security.network.client - https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/entitlements/com.apple.security.network.client com.apple.security.network.server - https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/entitlements/com.apple.security.network.server com.apple.developer.networking.multicast - https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/entitlements/com.apple.developer.networking.multicast Is my understanding correct that these are the relevant ones for MacOS? Are there any more entitlements that are of interest? Would it then mean that the executables (java for example) would have to enroll for these entitlements to be allowed to invoke those functions at runtime? Reading through https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/entitlements, I believe that even when an executable is configured with these entitlements, when the application is running if that executable makes use of any operations for which it has an entitlement, the user is still prompted (through a UI notification) whether or not to allow the operation. Did I understand it right? The part that isn't clear from that documentation is, if the executable hasn't been configured with a relevant entitlement, what happens when the executable invokes on such operation. Will the user see a UI notification asking permission to allow the operation (just like if an entitlement was configured)? Or does that operation just fail in some behind the scenes way? Coming back to the networking specific entitlements, I found a couple of places in the MacOS documentation where it is claimed that the com.apple.developer.networking.multicast entitlement is only applicable on iOS. In fact, the entitlement definition page for it https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/entitlements/com.apple.developer.networking.multicast says: "Your app must have this entitlement to send or receive IP multicast or broadcast on iOS. It also allows your app to browse and advertise arbitrary Bonjour service types." Yet, that same page, a few lines above, shows "macOS 10.0+". So, is com.apple.developer.networking.multicast entitlement necessary for an executable running on MacOS which deals with multicasting using BSD sockets? As a more general comment about the documentation, I see that the main entitlements page here https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/entitlements categorizes some of these entitlements under specific categories, for example, notice how some entitlements are categorized under "App Clips". I think it would be useful if there was a category for "BSD sockets" and under that it would list all relevant entitlements that are applicable, even if it means repeating the entitlement names across different categories. I think that will make it easier to identify the relevant entitlements. Finally, more as a long term question, how does one watch or keep track of these required entitlements for these operations. What I mean is, is it expected that application developers keep visiting the macos documentation, like these pages, to know that a new entitlement is now required in a new macos (update) release? Or are there other ways to keep track of it? For example, if a newer macos requires a new entitlement, then when (an already built) executable is run on that version of macos, perhaps generate a notification or some kind of explicit error which makes it clear what entitlement is missing? I have read through https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/diagnosing-issues-with-entitlements but that page focuses on identifying such issues when a executable is being built and doesn't explain the case where an executable has already been shipped with X entitlements and a new Y entitlement is now required to run on a newer version of macos.

I'm working on a Password Manager app that integrates with the AutoFill Credential Provider to provide stored passwords and OTPs to the user within Safari and other apps. Password AutoFill works perfectly. I'm unable to get iOS to register that the app supports OTPs though. I've followed the Apple documentation here: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/authenticationservices/providing-one-time-passcodes-to-autofill and added "ProvidesOneTimeCodes" to the AutoFill extension's Info.plist, but iOS just doesn't seem to notice the OTP support. <key>ASCredentialProviderExtensionCapabilities</key> <dict> <key>ProvidesOneTimeCodes</key> <true/> <key>ProvidesPasswords</key> <true/> </dict> Any help would be greatly appreicated!

Hello, My current app bundle structure is I have a sandboxed GUI and a unsandboxed launch agent that does the core logic of my app. Our pkg post install scripts handles bootstrapping the Launch Agent plists defined in /Library/Launch Agents. I have been tasked with creating a restart/exit button on the UI which terminates the Launch Agent (essentially bootout command in launchctl) and terminates the UI as well. I have attempted to follow the SMAppServcice.agent(plistName) and changed Program key to BundleProgram and changed the value to the relative path as in example provided in Apple Docs (old launch agent plist attached, and new bundle build phase style attached. I have been unable to register or unregister the launch agent via the UI, and in the initial case when trying to call unregister the launch agent got removed and i got "Operation not permitted" with error kSMErrorInvalidSignature seems like some code signature issue im not aware of. I wasnt even able to bootstrap the launch agent back until I found a script which reset such launchctl settings. My question is: is the sandboxed UI not able to do this (and why is this not documented in the dev docs I have no idea), and if so then how would I go about terminating both services and also being able to restart them? This seems like a common use case the UI should be able to handle as far as ownership of running/booting out its resources. ).

I have some questions regarding App Group Id's and use of the FileManager during an Appstore iOS transfer. I've read a lot of the topics here that cover app groups and iOS, but it's still unclear exactly what is going to happen during transfer when we try to release an updated version of the app from the new account. We're using this method FileManager.default.containerURL(forSecurityApplicationGroupIdentifier: "group.com.foo.bar") to store files on the device that are important for app launch and user experience. Once we transfer the app and begin the process of creating a new version under the new account will we be able to read the files that are stored using this app group id under the new account? What steps do we need to take in order to handle this and continue being able to access these files? It seems like the app group is not transferred in the process? I've seen some users mention they removed the app group from the original account and created it again under the receiving account (with notes mentioning this is undocumented behavior). These conversations we're centered around Shared user defaults, and that applies as well but I'm more concerned with reading the values from the file system. Thanks!

I have added 2 command line tools in my swiftUI app for macOS, it was working fine locally, but it gives error when i try to make archive of it. I am not sure about the reason, but it was related to sandboxing the command line tools, after this i have tried multiple solutions but i am unable to resolve this issue, how should i handle the helper command line tools

I noticed the time sensitive entitlement says it's only for iOS and macOS. But without the entitlement, the time sensitive toggle doesn't show in my app's notification settings on visionOS. When I archive my visionOS app for App Store Connect, the entitlement seems to be taken out as it doesn't show in my entitlement list for the build in App Store Connect. I'm confused at this point if the entitlement is really necessary, since it seems to be needed to debug on the simulator at least. I don't have a physical device to test it on unfortunately.

I can't upload my macOS app to app store connect. Each time i try to upload, i see this message: Provisioning profile failed qualification Profile doesn't support App Groups. An empty app without an app group uploads fine, but if i add an app group to it, it does not upload.

I'm getting this error when uploading a build of my macOS app to App Store Connect. It has always worked before, and nothing changed about my use of app groups, and the iOS build uploaded without any problems. Cleaning the build folder and derived data folder doesn't help. I'm using automatically managed signing in Xcode. Invalid code signing entitlements. Your application bundle’s signature contains code signing entitlements that aren’t supported on macOS. Specifically, the “[group.]” value for the com.apple.security.application-groups key in “.pkg/Payload/.app/Contents/MacOS/” isn’t supported. This value should be a string or an array of strings, where each string is the “group” value or your Team ID, followed by a dot (“.”), followed by the group name. If you're using the “group” prefix, verify that the provisioning profile used to sign the app contains the com.apple.security.application-groups entitlement and its associated value(s).

I use shared UserDefaults in my Swift FileProvider extension app suite. I share data between the containing app and the extension via User Defaults initialized with init(suiteName:). Everything was working fine before macOS 15 (Sequoia). I know that Sequoia changed the way the app group should be configured. My app group is know set to "$(TeamIdentifierPrefix)com.my-company.my-app". But the containing (UI) app and the Extension read and write from and to different plist locations although the same app-group is specified for both targets in XCode. The containing app reads and writes to "~/Library/Preferences/$(TeamIdentifierPrefix)com.my-company.my-app.plist" The Extension reads and writes to "~/Library/Containers/com.my-company.my-app.provider/Data/Library/Preferences$(TeamIdentifierPrefix)com.my-company.my-app.plist" Both of these locations seem completely illogical for shared UserDefaults. I checked the value returned by FileManager.default.containerURL(forSecurityApplicationGroupIdentifier: "$(TeamIdentifierPrefix)com.my-company.my-app" in both the containing app and the Extension and the value in both of them is the same but has nothing to do with the actual paths where the data is stored as provided above. (The value is as expected - "~/Library/Group Containers/$(TeamIdentifierPrefix)com.my-company.my-app/" P.S. Of course, $(TeamIdentifierPrefix), my-company and my-app here are placeholders for my actual values.

In an expo managed project which utilizes custom expo plugins, we're having trouble getting the keychain-access-groups entitlement inserted to our provisioningprofile for signing. The provisioning profile we download from apple dev portal contains: <key>keychain-access-groups</key> <array> <string>56APMZ7FZY.*</string> <string>com.apple.token</string> </array> and this is not recognized by xcode for signing; an error is thrown: Provisioning profile "ccpp" doesn't include the com.apple.developer.keychain-access-groups entitlement. A matching error is thrown during EAS build. So we need to find a way to modify the ccpp.mobileprovision locally and then sign the build using the modified ccpp.mobileprovision. Or, we need guidance on the proper way to resolve this situation. Questions: why does the downloaded mobileprovision file have the keychain-access-groups key, and not com.apple.developer.keychain-access-groups? Both Xcode and EAS appear to demand the latter keyname. when I use expo prebuild, I am able to see the following in the .entitlements file: <key>com.apple.developer.keychain-access-groups</key> <array> <string>$(AppIdentifierPrefix)com.myapp</string> </array> I am adding this entitlement using a custom expo plugin. However, the mobileprovision file downloaded from apple developer portal has no knowledge of this setting which is only applied through expo prebuild. So what I am left with at the end is an entitlements file generated by my expo prebuild which has the correct setting, and a provisioningprofile downloaded from dev portal with an incorrect setting, and I don't know how to mend the downloaded provisioningprofile (incorrect setting) with my local entitlements file (correct setting).

I'm at my wit's end here with an iOS app I'm developing. I've applied for the Family Controls entitlement, and while my extensions (like Device Monitor) have been accepted, the main target entitlement for my app still hasn't been approved. Here's the timeline: Extensions (Device Monitor etc.): Accepted about a month ago. Main App Entitlement: Still pending - it's been over 6 weeks now. I'm looking for: Anyone who has gone through this process and can share how long it took for their main app entitlement to get approved after the extensions were. Any tips on what might speed up the process or what I might be doing wrong. Experiences with contacting Apple Developer Support regarding this issue. If you've been through a similar ordeal or have any advice, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks for any help or insight you can offer!

My app is a Safari extension. When trying to validate the app, I get the following error: App sandbox not enabled. The following executables must include the "com.apple.security.app-sandbox" entitlement with a Boolean value of true in the entitlements property list: [( "app.rango.Rango.pkg/Payload/Rango for Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/Rango for Safari" )] Refer to App Sandbox page at https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/app_sandbox for more information on sandboxing your app. I don't know why this is happening. I have app sandbox enabled in both the app and the extension target. I have both entitlement files. When executing codesign -d --entitlements :- /path/to/binary I get the following: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "https://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"><plist version="1.0"><dict><key>com.apple.security.app-sandbox</key><true/><key>com.apple.security.files.user-selected.read-only</key><true/><key>com.apple.security.get-task-allow</key><true/><key>com.apple.security.network.client</key><true/></dict></plist> If I check on Activity Monitor, on the sandbox column it shows true. I have no idea why I keep getting this error when all indicates that the app is actually sandboxed.

Hi there, I am planning an app that requires use of the Family Controls Entitlement to access data on the user's screen time. I understand that this has to be requested from Apple before it can be used in production. I have found the following form to request approval, but it requires an App and bundle ID, which suggests that approval can only be requested after the app has been developed. https://developer.apple.com/contact/request/family-controls-distribution I'd like to avoid the situation where I spend a lot of time on developing the app, only to find out that the Family Controls Entitlement will not be granted for my use case. Is there any way that I can request provisional pre-approval for my app? Perhaps based on an app description and some mockups? Or, at least some idea of whether my particular use case is likely to be approved? Thanks.

Hello, why is apple won’t adding Just-In-Time compiler to ”Emulators” in the app store. And/or hypervisor for newer devices. i feel like UTM (which is a PC Emulator) or other Apps that emulate need JIT to work properly, and will consume significantly less battery to emulate/virtualize, And will have a noticeably better performance than just not enabling JIT, and by the way jit is already being used on iPadOS/iOS 18.3/18.3.1 and newer/older version of that so being enabled by the choice of the developer of the App is more convenient than doing it with tools. and by the why apple wont let emulators on iPads and newer iPhones do hypervisor, it’s better than JIT but requires a good cpu, like making it available to people with newer/powerful devices, hypervisor is better than JIT by a lot and removing it in iPadOS/iOS 18.4 was an unnecessary choice?, becuase it had a better potential in virtualization instead of emulating, and I feel like enabling it In M1-M2 iPads and A14-18pro and newer devices is just better from having it disabled, to unlock the fullest potential of the iPad it needs to have a app or something to do instead of just running high graphics games/or Apps.

Hi, We have an app that is a default mail client, so it has this entry in its entitlements file: com.apple.developer.mail-client. This seems to create issues with ad-hoc distribution. We can distribute the app on App Store Connect without any issues and have been doing so for a while. We wanted to try using Xcode Cloud to manage our releases. The app export works fine for both App Store Distribution and Development Distribution. However, the ad-hoc distribution step fails. (We don't need ad-hoc distribution, but Xcode Cloud seems to prevent us from removing this step.) I tried building and releasing the app locally for ad-hoc distribution and encountered the same error as on Xcode Cloud. When Xcode tries to generate the profile, it outputs the following error: Provisioning profile "iOS Team Ad Hoc Provisioning Profile: com.infomaniak.mail" failed qualification checks: Profile doesn't support Default Mail App. Profile doesn't include the com.apple.developer.mail-client entitlement. Is it something broken with our config ? What are we missing ? Local error in Xcode Organizer: Remote error on Xcode cloud:

I've successfully obtained Distribution entitlements for Family Controls. However, this seems to only apply to the main target/identifier and not the extensions, like DeviceActivityMonitor, ShieldConfigurationDataSource, or ShieldActionExtension. Did I perhaps fill out the form with the wrong bundle ID? If I go to "Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles", my main identifier for the app has the Distribution entitlement. But the extensions and the wildcard don't. This means that trying to create an archive results in the following two errors, each repeated twice: Provisioning profile failed qualification (Profile doesn't support Family Controls (Development)) Provisioning profile failed qualification (Profile doesn't include the com.apple.developer.family-controls entitlement) Note that my entitlement files are set up correctly. Do I need to fill out the form with a wildcard instead? Or am I doing something wrong? Thank you.

Hi Folks, We are reading the USB device data from our app using libusb/iokit libraries. Before updating the MacOS to the 15.3 we never faced any issue but after updating OS to 15.3 Sequoia we started facing issue to access the USB device's information. We are not getting the device endpoints for the matching service and fails with below error- Error:Failed to create IOUSBHostObject. with reason: IOServiceOpen failed. Respective code snippet- service = IOServiceGetMatchingService(kIOMasterPortDefault, matchingDictionary); IOUSBHostInterface* interface = [[IOUSBHostInterface alloc] initWithIOService:service options:IOUSBHostObjectInitOptionsDeviceCapture queue:*queue error:&error interestHandler:nil]; We get the denial message during accessing the IOService error 23:17:30.691934-0800 kernel 41 duplicate reports for Sandbox: spotlightknowledged(1399) deny(1) mach-lookup com.apple.diagnosticd error 23:17:30.691945-0800 kernel System Policy: com.prograde.pgdrefreshpro.helpe(70515) deny(1) iokit-open-service IOUSBHostInterface Also when we checked the IOUSBHOST logs we can see pipes are stalled while running the RefreshPro app as below- 2025-02-05 22:06:31.838141-0800 0x25913e Error 0x0 0 0 kernel: (IOUSBHostFamily) AppleUSBIORequest: AppleUSBIORequest::complete: device 8 (SD PG05.5@08210000) endpoint 0x00: status 0xe0005000 (pipe stalled): 0 bytes transferred We need an assistance here to know what exactly could be the cause and how can we elevate the permissions to access the USB device on MacOS15.3. Do we need other entitlements? As we never faced such issue with our certificate and Identifier on any MacOS versions and with the current entitlements we have. Do we need to include any entitlement in the code? Thanks.

Hey everyone, I wanted to check if anyone else has faced extreme delays when requesting access to Apple Pay Wallet APIs. It was Oct 11 2024 a year ago since we first applied to enable in-app provisioning for virtual cards in our app and we made 1% progress. For context, we already got access from Google for Google Wallet—it was smooth, professional, and timely. But with Apple… it’s been nothing but an endless cycle of waiting. We followed every step, submitted everything correctly, and even called Apple Developer Support multiple times. Their response? "We've escalated it." Again and again. But there’s no real progress. We’re rerouted, ignored, and left in limbo. At this point, I don’t even know if anyone is actually reviewing these requests. If a business like ours—fully compliant and ready to integrate—can’t even get a response in 150 day, how is this process supposed to work? I’m posting this here because I can’t be the only one. Has anyone else faced this? If you finally got access, how did you do it? Because right now, it feels like Apple Pay in-app provisioning is an impossible goal. Hoping someone from Apple sees this and realizes how broken this process is. We’re just trying to innovate and offer Apple users a great experience—why is it so difficult? Looking forward to hearing from anyone in the community who can help, Thanks! 🙏

I keep getting this error when trying to install Audio app extension. Everything is reviewed from certificates to profiles, for some reason CreatingCustomAudioEffects sample is deployed correctly but when Creating new Project (Audio Extension App) from new project Option, it doesn't work at all. If I remove Extension from Frameworks and deploy app, then no problem but then App crashes as extension is missing. Something wrong with Xcode? I am pretty sure it used to build new projects but not anymore. Failed to verify code signature of /var/installd/Library/Caches/com.apple.mobile.installd.staging/temp.0k1RXy/extracted/AudioUnitsAppExtensionTest.app : 0xe8008015 (A valid provisioning profile for this executable was not found.) Please ensure sure that your app is signed by a valid provisioning profile. If this issue persists, please attach the following when sending a report to Apple: A sysdiagnose from this Mac A sysdiagnose from the device failing installation An IPA of the app failing installation

Environment: Xcode v. 16.2; Swift version 6+ Scenario: I have an .xcodeproj within an .xcsworkingspace that must follow the 'command-line' paradigm outside the sandbox. My UnitTest (using the newer 'Swift Test' vs 'XCTest') is hitting runtime fatal errors due to sandbox violations. Here's a typical error line from the compiler: 1 duplicate report for Sandbox: chmod(41377) deny(1) file-read-data /Users/Ric/Library/.. I've set the .entitlement to ignore sandbox: &amp;lt;key&amp;gt;com.apple.security.app-sandbox&amp;lt;/key&amp;gt; &amp;lt;false/&amp;gt; I also created a shell script in the project build phase to access my TestData which was copied via a Build Phase: #!/bin/bash BUILD_DIR="${BUILT_PRODUCTS_DIR}" TEST_DATA="${SRCROOT}/SwiftModelTest/TestData" mkdir -p "${BUILD_DIR}/TestData" cp -R "${TEST_DATA}/" "${BUILD_DIR}/TestData/" What do I need to allow real-time Testing of my code without worrying about the Sandbox?