Prefill Distribution manifest information during iOS app signing

Question

I sign my iOS app in XCode's archive manager for Ad-Hoc distribution for beta testers.

Every time I release a new beta version by pressing the Distribute App / Ad Hoc it asks for a Distribution manifest information with URLs to fill.

It's quite tedious to fill these fields every time, although these values don't change. Is it possible to pre-fill these fields by doing something in xcode project settings?

Answer 1

When you select Ad-Hoc distribution, simply uncheck the "Include manifest for over-the-air installation" option and you won't be prompted.

You can use a previously generated manifest for the new version unless you want to change something; The version number in the manifest is purely informational and doesn't need to match the version number in your app bundle.

Answer 2

I know you decided to just not include the manifest for over-the-air installation. In my case, though, I did want to automate this a bit. So, I used a third party tool, TextExpander, so that I can just type otaqa or otaprod and it will populate these three fields for me. I just included the three strings with tab keys in between them:

Note, I am unaffiliated with this paid app, TextExpander. But, I just found this workaround to be a great time-saver when needing to repeatedly enter the same three values in three separate text fields.

I really wish Xcode handled this process better, saving these values for us.