Deploy Xamarin.iOS App to iOS Device without an Apple Developer Account

Posted by Suthahar on Saturday, February 01, 2020 48 comments

On 2011 at Xamarin announced great and happy news to all c#.net developer, can develop ios application using xamarin .

On 2016 Microsoft announced that they had acquired Xamarin and all the visual studio developer can develop ios and android application, without pay any extra payment.

iOS developer they can do for testing in simulator if they want to test in the device, need to buy Apple Developer account, its cost 99$ /year.

On June 8 2015 at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference Xcode version 7 was announced and good news is that you can develop and test your apps on your iOS device without a paid Apple Developer account.

This is great news for all the iOS developer, before upload store we can do testing ios application from device without a paid any payment.

Deploy Xamarin.iOS App to iOS Device without an Apple Developer Account

In this article, I am going to share about how to deploy xamarin.ioS application to iOS device using free provisioning file

Requirements:

XCode 7 or higher
Go to Mac machine and verify Xcode version is 7 or higher, if it’s not update xcode
iOS 9 or higher
Create free Apple ID from here( https://appleid.apple.com/account#!&page=create)

You can follow bellows steps for how to setup and deploy xamarin.iOS application into iOS device.

Step 1: Add Apple Account from Xcode
In mac Machine, Open Xcode , Xcode Menu >Preferences > Click on Account tab > Select + Add Apple ID > login with Apple ID

Click on View Details and create signing identity and click on create button next to iOS development

Step 2: Create XCode project:

Xcode > create new project > project name as “testapp” > Connect iphone /IPad from mac machine > Select your device and press run button
You will get Code Singing issue

Issue 1: Xcode 7: Project requires a development team

If your using XCode 7 means, you will get following error

Select your Team as below from Project Options and General tab

Issue 2: Xcode8: Code signing Error in Build Error:
If you are using Xcode 8 or above, the code signing error will appear while build xcode project

Solution:

Step 2.1: Go to the ioS project editor
Step 2.2: Select the General Section
Step 2.3: Select Checkbox for Automatically manage signing
Step 2.4: Select the Personal Team you created earlier from the ‘Team’ dropdown in the ‘Signing’ section

Step 3: Trusting the certificate from device
You will get following error could not launch “Your app name “

In your iOS device > open the Settings > go to general > Device management (if you’re not getting this option re deploy the application again)
You will see the email address associated with the Apple ID you used to code sign your app.

Tap it, then tap ‘Trust <your_email>’

Now go back to xcode and run the application

Step 4: Update bundle Identifier from Xamarin Project:

In Xamarin.iOS project , Goto Info.Plist file > Change Bundle Identifier (use same xcode project bundle identifier)

And make sure from project options and select IOS bundle signing > Signing identity select your apple account

Select your iphone device from xamarin.ios project and click on run the application.

I believe this article will helpful for you deploy application to ios device ,if you have question /issue/feedback share into comments box .

Tags Xamarin Xamarin.iOS

Suthahar

Suthahar Jegatheesan is Mobile and Cloud Specialist/Architect and he has 15+ years of IT experience as a Technology Consultant /Programmer/Developer in IT industry. Suthahar is an industry luminary focused on AI, Computer Vision, Bot, Machine Learning, UWP, Azure, Xamarin and Web Emerging User Experiences as subject matter expert (SME) in implementation, architecture, development and administration.

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