Installing a Distribution Provisioning Profile on your iPhone

If you're using Visual Studio to develop your Xamarin app for iOS you probably aim to release it someday. One of the most important things to do then is to test the actual build that you plan to upload.

When you build the binaries to send to Apple you need to sign them with at distribution provisioning profile. To upload and run your ipa-file on an actual device you need to upload the same distribution provisioning profile to that Device. This guide already assumes that you have a profile set up.

The only way to add the profile at the moment is through Xcode.

There are a few simple steps to do so.

1. Navigate to http://developer.apple.com and sign in
2. Find your distribution provisioning profile under "Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles"
3. Download it to your local machine
4. Make sure your device is connected
5. Open Xcode and click Window -> Devices
6. Right click your device and select "Show Provisioning Profiles..."
7. Click the + sign at the bottom and add the downloaded profile.

The app should now run using the Appstore and Release configuration.

ALSO IMPORTANT

Make sure that these configurations actually build your PCL-project and any other reference projects needed.