App stuck on installing ipa from iTunes

Question

Since moving to ios7 I am unable to distribute my app to my iPad using the ipa and provisioning profile (the same ones that worked just before I upgraded to ios7 do not work either).

This is what I have tried:

• Remove all profiles from iPad
• Deleting existing app from iPad and iTunes
• Add ipa and prov profile to iTunes
• Reinstalled app from iTunes

The app installs on the iPad saying 'installing' until it appears to have loaded and the app name is shown below the icon. However in iTunes it still says 'installing' and never changes to 'remove'.

If I then unplug the iPad and tap the app to start it it reverts back to 'installing' and then nothing else happens.

Answer 1

Here are the steps that seemed to fix the problem for me:

Deleting all profiles from device (iPad in my case)

Settings - General - Profile delete any relating to your app

Deleting all profiles from iTunes on iMac

Finder - Library (GO with ALT pressed displays this) - Mobile Device - Provisioning Profiles

delete all provisioning profiles you see here. This is where Xcode sees any when choosing your profile.

In Xcode - in both Projects and Targets

Set all code signing to None

Archive your project - in Xcode Product - Archive

You will be told no profiles exist - choose Fix Issue. Your provisioning profiles will be downloaded into the Library - Mobile Device - Provisioning Profiles (the folder we previously cleared.) In future these will be your options when setting your Project and Target code signing.

In Organiser

Export your archived product and choose the team Profile (or any that have been downloaded) as code signing.

Drop the ipa into iTunes and install.

Answer 2

You most likely built your archive with an App Store provisioning profile instead of an Ad-Hoc Provisioning profile

Answer 3

For Ad Hoc provisioning - check the device UDIDs.

We used an app called UDID+ to get the device UDIDs. Don't! The app gives you the wrong UDID with iOS7.

Apple's developer site accepted the faulty UDIDs and everything proceeded normally until the issue described above occurred. It took a looong time and lots of starting from scratch to figure that one out.

Answer 4

I had the same problem. I had archived with the wrong code signing identity selected in XCode. Changing that and creating a new archive solved it straightaway.

Answer 5

I just did 'clean' and 'build' in the xcode product menu (then archive, export ipa, etc) and it works now.

Answer 6

I had a similar issue and turned out the reason was because I was trying to distribute an .ipa file without first adding the recipient device UDIDs to my developer account settings. It used to be possible in some earlier iOS versions to distribute an .ipa without adding the UDIDs but apparently not anymore. More info here: https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/IDEs/Conceptual/AppDistributionGuide/TestingYouriOSApp/TestingYouriOSApp.html

And I also needed to change the code signing settings from Xcode from "iPhone developer" to "iPhone distribution".