3 Steps to Run iOS App on Your Device Without Developer Account

For people who started iOS development, running your app in the app simulator won’t be the same as running on your own device. There are features that don’t exist in the simulator (and it’s harder to show to your friends what you’ve made!). Luckily, it’s free and easy to run your app on a physical device without a developer account.

Here are the things that you need to prepare :

• 💻 Mac OS machine running latest Xcode
• 📱 Apple device (more recent ones the better)
• Apple account (the same account for downloading apps in the App Store)
• Your app (if you don’t have one yourself, make a simple one)

1. Add your account in Xcode

• From the menubar, go to Xcode > Preferences...
• Click the Accounts tab (the second tab)
• On bottom left, press the + icon
• Select Add Apple ID...
• Insert your Apple ID’s credentials

 2. Configure your project’s signing

• Go to Navigator area, select Project navigator tab, select your project name
• Select your app target in the Targets tab
• In the Signing area, select your account as the team name

3. Configure your device 📱

• Plug your Apple device to your development machine (this will trigger Xcode to processes symbol files from your devices, which will take a sometime)
• Instead of running on simulator, select your device instead
• Press the play button to run the app!
• Errm… not so fast. We need to allow codesign to access our keychain, press Always Allow
• Almost there, you will be prompted to verify your account in your device
• Now on your iOS device, go to Settings > General > Profiles & Device Management, tap your account under Developer App, tap Trust '<your apple account email>', and confirm by tapping Trust again
• Back at Xcode, press play button to build and run again
• 🎉

It’s great to see that Apple makes it easy for us to try our app in our actual hands. Happy testing!

I wrote this article as a pull request to enhance codebar’s awesome iOS workshop session tutorial written by Yvette Cook.