How to share an iOS distribution certificate

by Jonathan Franchell, CEO of Ironpaper - For more tips and hacks:

For iOS app developers, there are some annoying parts of the development process that many developers just hate. For one, only one person can be nominated to be Team Agent on Apple's enterprise account. Now, if you don't have a build server, this can be frustrating. How do you “share” the iOS distribution certificate across multiple computers? Or, how do you hand-off this process to someone else?

You can share the iOS distribution certificate with another member of your team, which helps increase collaboration during this process. From the system that has the distribution profile installed, you can finish the certificate process and share the cert with another user.

Share ios distribution certificate

How to share an ios distribution certificate

1. Open “Keychain Access”  from your Applications > Utilities folder on your Mac
2. Look for the "Category" area within Keychain Access (left column, below "Keychains"
3. Then look for "iPhone Distribution: [name]" then expand it and highlight both the "iPhone Distribution..." row and the next row, which is the “team agent name” private key
4. While both rows are highlighted, right-click and select “Export 2 items” in order to share
5. You will be saving a p12 file to your machine, and you will need to create a password for it in order to share the file (use a good password and remember the password because you will need to share the password as well)
6. You are free to send both the P12 file and the password to your team member!

Install the p12 file

The next step is to install the p12 file on your team member's system and get going! Here are the steps...

1. Double-click on p12 file that your team member sent you. Keychain Access will open.
2. Enter the password you were given... if you don't have the password, go get it!
3. This will give you a new private key
4. Then login to "Team Agent" account on https://developer.apple.com/ and select the Select "iOS Provisioning Profile" link
5. Select Certificates and then Development tab and download and install the certificate for Team Agent (Don't worry! You are almost there!!!)
6. Select Certificates, then Development tab, and download to install WWDR intermediate certificate (
   1. Double-click to install to keychain
7. Select Certificates then Development tab and download to install WWDR intermediate certificate
8. Select Provisioning and then Distribution tab and download provisioning profile (More specifically, the .mobileprovision file )
9. Finally, drag onto Xcode icon to install