Multiple iPhone Developer Certificates on One Computer

Siavash January 27, 2009 General, Iphone

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Recently I ran into a problem where I joined another team in the iPhone Dev Center. Upon joining the team, I decided to install my Development Certificate for this team. Unknowingly I just broke my whole iPhone development environment. Apparently xcode doesn’t like signing applications with an ambiguous certificate. Frankly, who would blame them? In my case I had two certificates with iPhone Developer: Siavash Ghamaty.

Hitting up Google I found that there wasn’t many users like me and that this was a rare case. I did come across a couple people that did have the same issue. Since xcode looks at your certificates on your computer with iPhone Developer: First Last, you shouldn’t have the same certificate on the same login. Create yourself a new account on your mac and create your iPhone Developer certificate there. You will have to login to that account to develop for one team then another for the next. Make sure to follow the correct steps in the Program Portal on creating a developer certificate.

This method could potentially be a hassle. Another fix from another user that has not been tested yet is to create a new keychain. Make sure the keychain is not set to default. Point your project implicitly to that certificate instead of the other. Unfortunately I haven’t test this and for those that have or have an article to pass, feel free to comment.

Lastly, another potential fix… don’t install another development certificate on your computer! If your working with another team, just use your development certificate that is already installed to build. It won’t hurt anyone and causes less heartache. Figure a way to install two certificates on one mac if you absolutely have to.

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4 Responses to “Multiple iPhone Developer Certificates on One Computer”

  1. VeryVito said:

    Feb 14, 09 at 12:58 pm

    I’ve been having the same issue, and was glad to find this post to confirm I wasn’t alone in this. My guess it that this will become a much more common problem as iPhone developers begin to work on more than one project, and the Developer Portal will need to do something to handle this better.

    Fortunately, I was able to use a slightly different name for one team (e.g., “Timothy” rather than “Tim,” “Jack” vs. “James,” etc), which resolved it for me. The trick will be making sure the person writng out the invites for new projects will know what name NOT to use.

  2. Alex Curylo said:

    May 09, 09 at 4:44 pm

    I ran into this today too. Any reason not to just delete the one(s) you’re not using at the moment from the keychain, saving the .cer file first so you can add it again whenever you are switching? Not the most elegant no, but it seems less hassle than any of these suggestions…

  3. krishnan said:

    Nov 30, 09 at 11:05 pm

    Hi siavash,

    I have two mac. And I got the developer certificate from my first mac. I need certificates in both mac. What can I do?

  4. Siavash said:

    Dec 01, 09 at 10:16 am

    krishnan, you will need to export your keys from one computer to the next before installing the certificate. Here is a good blog post post:

    http://www.theevilboss.com/2009/06/iphone-sdk-development-on-multiple.html

    Let me know if that helps.

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