9

I have developed (and used) an iOS App for years now which I do not want to publish to the App Store. Until iOS 16 everything was fine with development/distribution, I think that I needed to release a new build once a year to keep it running (I guess because the Certificates are valid for 1 year, which was fine)

But since iOS 16 the "Developer Mode" needs to be enabled in order to run the App. If I were the only one who uses the App that would be fine, but there are 2 other people who also use the App and I really don't want them to enable this "Developer Mode" just to run my App. For me personally that is no problem, because I am a developer and I know what it means

Does anyone know if there is a possibility to allow running the app in iOS 16 without having to enable the "Developer Mode" and not releasing the app to the App Store?

What I have tried so far is changing the Distribution from "Development" to "Ad Hoc" via a Provisioning Profile but that did not work and I don't really understand what the difference is since the Limits seem to be similar. Could it be a mistake from Apple that this does not work with "Ad Hoc" and will be "fixed" in near future? I know that in one of the iOS 16 Beta releases the same thing happened with Testflight-Builds which was fixed later with the stable release Testflight is currently on of the best options I have, but it bothers me that a) you need a seperate App for that and b) the builds are only valid for 90days

pjs
  • 18,696
  • 4
  • 27
  • 56
user12018375
  • 91
  • 2

1 Answers1

6

We have the same issue. We have an iOS app for internal distribution. We use an Ad Hoc Distribution Certificate - that works fine for iOS15 and below. However, for devices with iOS 16 - Developer Mode is required. However, we cannot ask our users to put their phones in Developer Mode. I think the options we have are to put the app through App Review with App Store Connect and then distribute the App using the App Business Manager. However, our App contains sensitive information we do not want accessed by external parties, plus the app uses Azure AD authentication - and we do not want to give Apple a login to our AD. As I understand it, the other alternative is to apply for the Apple Developer Enterprise Program. However, we have been refused this and have been advised to go down the Business Manager Route. Therefore, we are stuck.

Donal
  • 31,121
  • 10
  • 63
  • 72
  • 2
    Yes, we also have the same issue. We registered all devices using their udids and included them in the provisioning profile. In ios 15, it was working flawlessly – Christoph S Oct 28 '22 at 11:39
  • @ChristophS what is your next plan of action? Have you contacted Apple? – Donal Oct 28 '22 at 12:48
  • 1
    @ChristophS same with me, the app is already only executable on these devices (because of the registered UDIDs) and still the developer-mode is necessary with iOS 16 :-( makes no sense to me – user12018375 Oct 29 '22 at 06:41
  • @Donal i know for sure that the same approach (internal distribution via provisioning profile) has no problem with developer-mode if you have a "business apple developer account". but I have only a private account – user12018375 Oct 29 '22 at 06:45
  • 1
    We have a normal apple business account, but not an enterprise one. And that did not work deploying on registered iPad with ios 16.1 – Christoph S Oct 29 '22 at 17:04
  • Same issue with enterprise account. – Adam B Feb 16 '23 at 21:36
  • @AdamB how is it possible with enterprise account? you're distributing it as ad-hoc instead of enterprise app? – Mohamed Said Feb 22 '23 at 20:53
  • Yeah sorry, we have an enterprise apple account, but distributing using ad hoc credentials – Adam B Feb 23 '23 at 21:06