Is Team Identifier still necessary for iCloud Container

Question

I have a quick question: I noticed that with Xcode 6 that the default iCloud containers are named something like iCloud.com.company.myApp. Even though my Team-Id is selected under the General>Identity project settings. In the past I would have container ids including my Team-Id like ABC12D3EF8.com.company.myApp.

Will I need to change the iCloud container to include the Team-Id for any future mac app? or is the iCloud prefix enough in a post iCloud Drive era?

Thanks

Guanajuato

Answer 1

The iCloud prefix is required for any new iCloud containers. Older apps can still continue to use the Team Identifier prefix and will work as usual for iCloud Drive. The new iCloud prefixed containers can be used with or without iCloud Drive providing you set the appropriate entitlements.

Athalee

The old iCloud container prefixes (TeamID) cant be used in Xcode 6 anymore. So, if you need to update one of your existing apps that had the old prefix (TeamID), Xcode forces you to use iCloud as prefix and this causes users not be able to access their existing data that is in an iCloud container whose prefix is TeamID. This is really messed up... – Bonbon

I have an existing app (with the old TeamID prefixes) that I have updated several times now with Xcode 6. It uses only the old entitlements and works with iOS 7 and iOS 8 (with or without iCloud Drive). The Capabilities section of Xcode will indicate an error and if you select 'Fix Issue' that will mess up the entitlements. However, they can be fixed by manually updating the entitlements file. – Athalee

Ignoring the Xcode errors and not hitting the "Fix Issue" in Xcode was the key. Your suggestion worked perfectly. It's strange that we need to ignore the error indication in Xcode in order to make it work. Apple quality control is degrading... – Bonbon

Following your suggestion, the app runs in the simulator and I have access to my old iCloud documents under the old iCloud identifier which starts with the TeamID prefix. But Xcode doesn't let me install the app on my device and complains about provisioning profile no including the items listed in the entitlements. The entitlements includes the old iCloud identifier. I've updated the provisioning profile to ensure that it references an AppID that has iCloud enabled. There is, of course, no iCloud container ID with the old name (which includes TeamID). Very frustrating... – Bonbon

If the old iCloud container ID is not visible in the provisioning profile (on the Member Center) then you may need to contact the Developer Technical Support team. For my app the old container is still listed and selectable. I did need to resync the provisioning profiles via XCode. Regenerating and installing the profiles from within the Member Center did not work for me. – Athalee