aps-environment is always development

Question

I have created the app id with APNS enabled and I configured both development and production certificate

Now when I create entitlements it is always displaying development even If I change the Provisioning profile to iTunes deployment also the entitlements is displayed as development

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>aps-environment</key>
<string>development</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Lough

Its value is automatically updated by Xcode according to Apple documentation – Period

Answer 1

You can't use a production certificate in debug/development. Even if you do it, then, when you 'Archive', Xcode will automatically set it to production (Apple reference). You can see this when you try to submit your app to iTunes connect for TestFlight/Review or for Adhoc deployment.

Xcode 8:

Xcode 9:

Petaloid

when i run my app from xcode, push notification works, but when i upload the build to appstore and download it for testing using testflight it won't work. – Cockney

@AbhishekPandya on you push server you must change from developer to release certificates to test with TestFlight and make it work with official AppStore release. – Petaloid

So true, that's why I keep seeing inconsistent behaviors between Xcode app and TestFlight app – Dairy

Isn't there a way to edit info.plist so you don't see this screen when uploading to the App Store? – Symphonic

@Petaloid can you please tell me where i can find this screen in xcode 10 ? – Lymphocytosis

It's automatically updated by Xcode according to Apple doc – Period

@Period Thanks, I've added the reference to the docs to my answer. – Petaloid

> on you push server you must change from developer to release certificates I use Firebase. What's certificate for it?? – Inspan

@Inspan this in unrelated question to the topic, ask a new one. – Petaloid

Answer 2

XCode 10.2:

If you change your target to "Generic iOS Device" before Archive it will set the aps-environment variable to production. If you archive with the target set to your device it will archive with the aps-environment variable set to development.

Dictate

Answer 3

There is a known bug in Xcode whereby manually setting this to 'production' causes Xcode to display an error next to your entitlements config with a 'Fix Issue' button. Clicking this sets it back to 'development' This is not intended functionality. As I said it is a known issue and I believe I filed a radar when I first discovered it.

It has been fixed in Xcode 8.3 beta 2. In the meantime, manually set it to 'production' and then ignore the error Xcode gives you, your project will work just fine.

Direful

If I do this am not able to archive – Lough

great! my adhoc build was not getting uploaded to the device. After I changed from "development" to "production", it worked. Thanks a lot. – Parasympathetic

Note that Xcode will automatically change development to production now when you archive for release. You can confirm this when you review the IPA for upload. – Clearsighted

I'm on Xcode 10.3 and I still have this issue. Glad to know that it will automatically use production when archiving it. – Tyrosine

There's no more error on Xcode 13 but the APN environment setting of "production" is not respected. Xcode always build the app with "development" setting in debug mode. You can verify it by opening the package of compiled app, and find the embedded.provisionprofile file inside of it. – Cookbook

Is it possible to set APS Environment as production in a debug build and run in xcode? Or xcode ignores this and will it change to development automatically? – Caftan

@Cookbook is there a way to make it stay on production while testing? I am trying to test my prod push notifications but I can't get it to stop returning BadDeviceToken and I know it is because of this – Aerify

@Aerify I don't think so. I guess the system is designed to prevent developers from accidentally sending test notifications to end users from App Store. – Cookbook