No identities are available for signing Xcode 5

Question

I have an error \"No identities are available for signing\" when try to validate my app in Xcode 5. I tried all: Recreate certificates and provisioning profiles, all methods

Answer 1

Of all the development issues I've faced over my 20+ years as a software developer, none have wasted so much time as the code-signing/provisioning profile rubbish in Xcode.

This week, I have wasted 8+ hours trying to build an Ad-hoc release of our iPhone app. In the past, it just worked, I could Archive, stick a download button on our in-house webpage, and users could just install our app from this page.

But, this week, I was facing the same "No identities are available" issue, described here.

EVENTUALLY, here's what solved the issue for me:

When I logged into the hopeless Apple Developers website, it showed that our company had 2 "iOS Distribution" certificates. They were valid, their expiry dates are months away, and in the Keychain Access application, the certificates were installed and valid... no problems here.

But what fixed my issue was to delete these two certificates, recreate a new one, then recreate my "In house" Provisioning Profile (as the original one was now showing as being invalid, as it used the old "iOS Distribution" certificate).

I also went into the "Keychain Access" application on my MacBook, and deleted all "iOS Distribution" keychains.

Then, I downloaded the new certificates & provisioning profiles, now, finally, Xcode would report that there was an identity which I could code-sign with.

To the Xcode development team:

Please. Get this fixed.

If a developer like myself, is up against a wall, unable to get a valid Provisioning Profile, which will result in a downloadable app, which will fail each time on "The app couldn't be downloaded at this time" message.. DON'T allow the Archive function to be used.

Instead, TELL the user what the problem is. HELP them resolve it, rather than going through the motions, and happily allowing them to create Archives which will never be useable.

And if an Ad-Hoc install is invalid, please put something in the Log to explain what's gone wrong, and make this accessible from Xcode. Currently your "The app can't be downloaded at this time" message is both useless and misleading.

One last thing (if this helps):

Our company accidentally let its Developer Enterprise Program license expire last month. We did then renew, everything was seemingly okay again, but perhaps, behind the scenes, this messed up our "iOS Distribution" certificate ? And perhaps, not. From the Apple website's point of view, everything was fine.