Ios – Distribution certificate / private key not installed

certificateioskeychainxcode

Using Xcode 9.1, after building an iOS app, I want to archive it and upload it to the appStore for beta-testing.
But I get the following issue after clicking the button Upload to the App Store... and choosing Automatically manage signing:

"My Name" has one iOS Distribution certificate but its private key is
not installed. Contact the creator of this certificate to get a copy of the private key.

I do not know why this "private key is not installed", but the Distribution certificate may have been created on a different computer or something. In any case:

What is the simplest way to retrieve the missing private key and install it? In order to make things work.

Best Answer

Up to date (January 2021) (Xcode 10 - 12)

Go to Xcode - Preferences - Accounts - Manage Certificates
Click on the + at the bottom left, then Apple Distribution
Wait a little, then click Done

That's all. You may want to revoke the old certificate on developer.apple.com too.

Old answer

Step 1: Xcode -> Product -> Archives -> Click manage certificate

Click manage certificate

Step 2: Add iOS distribution

Add iOS distribution

Related Solutions

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The Eclipse plugin should then generate a new certificate when you next try to build a debug package. You may need to clean and then build to generate the certificate.

Xcode “Build and Archive” from command line

I found how to automate the build and archive process from the comand line, I just wrote a blog article explaining how you can achieve that.

The command you have to use is xcrun:

/usr/bin/xcrun -sdk iphoneos PackageApplication \
-v "${RELEASE_BUILDDIR}/${APPLICATION_NAME}.app" \
-o "${BUILD_HISTORY_DIR}/${APPLICATION_NAME}.ipa" \
--sign "${DEVELOPER_NAME}" \
--embed "${PROVISONING_PROFILE}"

You will find all the details in the article. If you have any questions dont hesitate to ask.