how do you distribute a mac osx application without a developer account?

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Asked 19/10, 2013 at 21:36 Answered 20/10, 2013 at 0:5

I have a simple mac osx application I wrote just for myself in xcode5. I don't have an mac developer account. i.e. I have not paid the $99 fee. (I do I have an iOS developer account and did pay that $99 fee.)

How can I distribute the app to run on another mac in my house? When I archive the project and click distribute it wants me to sign it with my developer key. Isn't there a way to do this for free?

Presentday answered 19/10, 2013 at 21:36 Comment(6)

No need to archive/distribute it - just build it and give it to whoever you want - it's in the build/Release folder. – Breeching 19/10, 2013 at 21:46

trying that, but when I move the app over to the other mac and launch it, nothing happens. I right click and say show package contents and everything seems to be there. But it's treating it like a folder and not an application. – Presentday 19/10, 2013 at 21:50

Are you doing a Finder copy or some other method ? Does the app launch OK on your development machine ? Are you using any third party frameworks ? Is the target Mac on an older version of OS X ? – Breeching 19/10, 2013 at 22:13

Could be a problem of security. Since Mountain Lion, by default, users are only allowed to run AppStore and signed applications. If you have not signed your binary, users will only be able to run it if they alter their settings. See here: macrumors.com/2012/02/16/… – Edgington 19/10, 2013 at 23:13

If it is a security setting issue, you can override the settings for an app, buy Control (or Right) clicking the app and select open. – Offenseless 19/10, 2013 at 23:53

i upgraded the other mac from lion to mountain lion and now it works :) The development machine was mountain lion. – Presentday 20/10, 2013 at 0:3

In the left side menu there is a folder called "Products", expand that. Right click on the app under Products and select "Show In Finder" then just copy that file.

My dev machine was osx 10.8.4 and the target machine was 10.7.5 so it didn't work. I upgraded the target machine to 10.8.4 and it works.

Presentday answered 20/10, 2013 at 0:5 Comment(1)

OK - FWIW you could also have changed your project settings on the development machine so that your executable would run on older versions of OS X (change the SDK version setting and minimum OS X version etc) – Breeching 21/10, 2013 at 9:23

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