Provisioning Profile With No Physical Devices

Question

I have seen this issue a lot on this forum and apple's developer forum. I have followed tutorials and have been at this for over 6 hours.

All I want is to add the app so I can testflight it with friends and family. I do not have an iphone. I have a Macbook Pro and a paid for Developer enrollment.

When I select Generic IOS Device and Archive I get this error:

I have the bundle ID in the Developer Certificate Page:

I have made the app in App Store Connect:

I have gone through the certificate steps and made these certificates in xcode: [![Xcode Certificates][4]][4]

I have these certificates in keychain: [![Keychain Certificates][5]][5]

I have tried restarting xcode, cleaning the build, changing build settings. I still get the two error messages when trying to archive from generic device.

What am I doing wrong? What else should I do?

SOLVED:

In case anyone else is having trouble. I had to create a provisioning profile for Distribution - App Store. And then in Xcode turn off Automatically manage signing, and select the provisioning profile manually for Signing(Debug), and Signing (Release).

Now I do not need a physical device to archive, unlike what the linked duplicate states.

Answer 1

If you use automatic code signing, it is a requirement that you need to have at least one registered device (registered when you run the debug version of the app on it the first time).

In order to do what you are trying to do, you will need to use manual code signing. On Apple's Developer site, manually create the provisioning profiles. If you want to send the, the .ipa, you can create a development provisioning profile, and manually register their devices with the device IDs for their device. But if they are not technically minded, that could be difficult. It sounds like you've made the decision to use TestFlight (probably the right call), especially since you have a paid developer account. For that, create a distribution provisioning profile and use that to deploy your app and distribute it via TestFlight.