I learned a little bit of information today. Apple has changed the policy on provisioning profiles expiration. Instead of expiring after one full year the expiration now happens in the year 2079. I think this is good since you would not want to create a new provisioning profile every year. Whatever triggered this change (the new iCloud?, iOS5) must be something that is coming soon to the iOS universe.
What is a provisioning profile?
A Provisioning Profile is a collection of digital entities that uniquely ties developers and devices to an authorized iOS Development Team and enables a device to be used for testing. A team can be just a one man team or several developers and QA testers. A Development Provisioning Profile must be installed on each device on which you wish to run your application code. Each Development Provisioning Profile will contain a set of iOS Development Certificates, Unique Device Identifiers and an App ID. When a user downloads and installs an app from the AppStore iOS does this automatically for them. But if you distribute apps ad hoc the profile must be installed manually.
Devices specified within the provisioning profile can be used for testing only by those individuals whose iOS Development Certificates are included in the profile. A single device can contain multiple provisioning profiles.
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Nathan, I noticed that profiles that have been created with exp. date 2079 had been marked “Invalid”. Do you know of any way to create a profile which will not expire? Is this something that just happened accidentally once?
Hi Jacob, unfortunately it looks like a glitch in iOS Provisioning Portal.
Can you tell me what happens when a provisioning profile expires?
Will the installed app become unusable?
When the provisioning profile that an app uses expires the app will have to be rebuilt. Before rebuilding you have to go into iOS Provisioning Portal to renew the expired provisioning profile. When renewed the profile will be good for another 12 months.
Why does it have to be rebuilt? Will the app no longer launch on the device, or does it prevent new distributions (i.e. prevent you from installing the app on devices)? What are the consequences of an expired profile?
@foodie202 When a provisioning profile expires the app using it will no longer launch. Think of the provisioning profile as a limited license to install and use an app. As the provisioning profile contains the device ID’s of the devices allowed to run the app it effectively allows you (the developer) to limit the devices that can install and run your app. So the answer is yes it prevents people from installing your app without your permission. When the profile expires the app will no longer open. The app will have to be rebuilt and redistributed using a non-expired profile for it to be usable again.
Very helpful post man, thanks for the info.