Question

I finally succeeded in building my first iPhone app but now I am pulling some hair out over a code signing problem.

This is the error message I get when I try to build the code in Xcode for my device –

Code Sign error: The identity ‘iPhone Developer’ doesn’t match any valid certificate/private key pair in the default keychain

In the organizer, I have a warning –
Xcode could not find a valid private-key/certificate pair for this profile on your keychain.

I have tried the following things –

1. I have deleted and re-created all the certificates from my Provisioning profile on developer.apple.com

2. In Utilities->Keychain, I have deleted the certificates from the System Keychain. The certificate is stored only in the login keychain.

3. I have re-started my Xcode and also my Mac

4. In the target, code signing section I have tried both iPhone Developer and also iPhone Distribution. For some reason the provisioning profile that I created has been grayed out.

So now I have no idea what’s going on and don’t know what to do. I’ll appreciate any help.

Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

In addition to the provisioning profiles, you also need the private keys for your developer account (one for development and one for distribution).

The provisioning profiles list all of the devices which the app is able to run on. But the actual app is signed with your account’s private key. This key is not stored in Xcode, it’s stored in Keychain Access (to ensure it’s encrypted with your user login credentials).

1. Go to the iOS developer center (https://developer.apple.com/devcenter/ios/index.action) and log in.
2. Click on the iOS Provisioning Portal link on the right
3. Click Certificates on the left
4. If you don’t already have one, you need to add a certificate under the development tab.
5. Click the certificate’s “download” link, to download it, and then open the file in Keychain Access.
6. You can (and should) now delete the downloaded certificate file. You don’t really want that file flying around anywhere, because it is used to sign your code. If you have a backup system like Time Machine running, I would turn it off during this process to ensure it doesn’t backup the unencrypted certificate (once it’s in the keychain, it is safely encrypted).

At some point you will need to repeat those steps, but for the “Distribution” tab of the certificates section.