Firebase App Distribution and iOS 16

[Eli Geller]

Hi, after reading the official documentation (https://firebase.google.com/docs/app-distribution/troubleshooting?platform=ios#_developer-mode-required-ios) and this StackOverflow post (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/73743792/developer-mode-required-to-open-app-from-firebase-app-distribution-ios-16), I understand that iOS 16 Firebase App Distribution users need to enable developer mode before they can install releases from FAD.

What I don't see reflected in that documentation is an acknowledgment that enabling Developer Mode in iOS 16 is no longer possible without first connecting a device to Xcode. In the iOS 16 betas, Developer Mode didn't require that step, but with the public release that changed, and an Xcode handshake is now required to enable Developer Mode. The Apple documentation (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/enabling-developer-mode-on-a-device) makes this clear, and we've encountered this with our own testers, who have iOS 16 devices, but don't have access to Xcode, and are not able to follow the Firebase documented steps to enable Developer Mode.

Can you update the FAD documentation to acknowledge that Xcode is now required to enable Developer Mode? Or, if I'm wrong and there's a workaround for these testers to turn on Developer Mode without Xcode or a Mac, please let me know--I'd be glad if that were the case. Thanks!

-Eli

[Kato Richardson]

Hello Eli,

I have seen some of the posts around stating you have to connect to XCode. But I've also seen reports that once one attempts to install the app, there will be a "please enable developer mode" prompt, and then the option appears in Settings. Have you actually attempted to install the app and then go to Settings after to see if developer mode appears?

Meanwhile, I'll bug some of our App Distro gurus to see if I can discover anything else that may help here.

☼, Kato

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[Eddie Liu]

Hi Eli,

We have at least one tester's device that has never been connected to Xcode and the tester was able to install the app after turning on Developer Mode.  Hope that helps.

Eddie

[Eli Geller]

That's great news. I'll check in with my testers again, and see if this is working for them now (it wasn't as of iOS 16.0, but maybe now that it's 16.1.2 things are different).

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[Eli Geller]

Thanks again for checking this out! I figured out what was preventing the iOS testers from installing in our case. At some point, our iOS App Distribution build process changed from producing an ad-hoc distribution archive and was generating an app store distribution one instead. That in turn prevented the testers from being able to download the FAD IPAs to their device (and, they had no separate ability to enable Developer Mode, which I incorrectly believed was the main problem).

Once we corrected the FAD build process to export the archive using ad-hoc distribution, everything worked as advertised. The testers were able to download the archives, and clicking on the archive enabled the option to activate Developer Mode, and once DM was activated the app worked as expected. 

Apologies for my confusion, and thanks again for all the guidance here!

-Eli

[miked...@google.com]

Thanks for following up, Eli. 

To be honest, we were internally scratching our heads trying to repro this, and many an iPhone was reset in the past couple of days :) Glad to hear you have it sorted out!

[Eddie Liu]

Thanks Eli for the updates!  That's one more item to be added to our guidelines!