What kind of Certifcate and Provisioning Profile is needed for an iOS Apple TestFlight release?

Tom picture Tom · Nov 29, 2014 · Viewed 35.3k times · Source

I'm planning to release a beta version of my iPhone app on iOS 8 devices through the new Apple TestFlight app. What kind of Certifcate and Provisioning Profile is needed for that? Do I need a Production certificate and Distribution provisioning profile?

Available are these:

Certificate:
- Pending
- Development
- Production

Provisioning Profile:
- Development
- Distribution

Answer

algal picture algal · Mar 30, 2015

The Apple Technical Note TN2407 has a section titled "Submitting your app for publishing to TestFlight" and in this section Apple says:

TestFlight apps submitted to iTunesConnect need to be signed with an App Store Distribution Profile. TestFlight no longer accepts apps submitted with an Ad Hoc profile.

So the situation is now unambiguous: you need a production certificate for the app, and an App Store distribution provisioning profile.