Installing ad-hoc iPhone distributions

What is an ad-hoc distribution?

An ad-hoc distribution is a version of an iPhone/iPad App that is meant to be distributed to only certain devices before submitting to the iTunes App Store. Usually we send such ad-hoc distributions to our customers so they can preview/test the App and give us feedback on it.

How does it work?

First of all we require the UDIDs (Unique Device IDentifier) of all devices on which the ad-hoc distributed App is required to run on. This means the App will run on those devices only. Then we will create a version of the App that contains these UDIDs, and thus can only be installed on the respective devices.

How do I get the UDID for my device?

There are several ways to accomplish this. The easiest is by using iTunes. But there is also a free iPhone App that displays the UDID of the device it’s being run on. We will describe both approaches.

Getting the UDID from iTunes

Connect your iPhone to your Mac or PC with the USB cable and launch iTunes. On the left hand side of the iTunes window you should see your device. It’s called Marcelo’s iPhone in the screenshot on the left.

Click on it to display your iPhone’s overview page. It should look like the image below.Here you can see your iPhone’s basic data such as it’s software version, capacity and serial number.

We are interested in the serial number. Try clicking on it. You will see it toggles between serial number and UDID each time you click on it.

Write down the UDID and send it to us when we are developing an App for you, as it will enable us to create an ad-hoc distribution for your device.

Getting the UDID on the iPhone

Download a copy of Ad Hoc Helper, a free App for your iPhone that will, among other information, also display the UDID. Use it to Email the UDID of your device to us.

Installing the ad-hoc distribution

When we email you an ad-hoc distribution of your App for the first time, the Email will contain two files. One file has the file extension .mobileprovision. The second file has the extension .zip. Save both files to your Mac/PC, for example on your desktop.
The first file, the .mobileprovision one, is the ad-hoc certificate that will let your iPhone know that it is allowed to execute the App. It’s time to install that certificate on your device.
Drag the .mobileprovision file from where you save it to the Library section in iTunes.

  • If you are on a Mac, just drag the .mobileprovision file to the iTunes icon on the Dock
  • If you are on a PC, launch iTunes, then drag the .mobileprovision file to the Library section to the left of the iTunes window

Now it’s time to install the actual App. Unzip the .zip file you received from us.

  • On a Mac, double-klick on the .zip file to extract it into the same directory.
  • On a PC, right-klick on the .zip file and select “Extract All”, accepting all defaults.

After the step above, you will see a new directory with the extension .app. Again, there’s a slightly different approach depending on your platform:

  • On the Mac, just drag the .app directory onto the iTunes icon on the Dock.
  • On the PC, launch iTunes and drag the .app to the Library -> Applications section.

If all went smooth so far, all you need to do now is sync your device. After the sync process, the App will be installed on your iPhone. If you ran into any problem, check out the Known Issues section below.

Known Issues

I cannot install the App you sent us. I am using Windows Vista

The “Extract All…” function in Vista corrupts the extracted files so that iTunes cannot install them. If you run into this problem please notify us, and we will send you an .ipa file instead. An .ipa file is a file that has been processed by iTunes and does not need to be unpacked by the operating system. It is slightly more work to generate a .ipa file, and it is only necessary for users with Windows Vista, therefore we do not do it per default.

I had a previous version of the App installed, after installing the new version I still see the old one

In this case you need to completely remove the old version. Follow these steps:

  • With your device connected, launch iTunes and click on your iPhone’s icon.
  • In the top menu there is an entry called “Apps”. Click on it. It should show you the installed Apps for your device.
  • Remove the check on the App you are trying to update
  • Sync your device.

After you have done the above procedure, the old version should have been gone, and you can carry on to install the latest one with the instructions provided above.

I removed the previous version of the App, now the update does not get installed

If you followed our instructions for updating an App, you probably removed the check mark on it from iTunes. Unfortunately, iTunes sometimes remembers this. So if you try to install an update of the same App, iTunes will think you still do not want it installed.

  • Launch iTunes with your device connected.
  • Click on your iPhone’s name on the left hand side menu
  • In the appearing top menu, click on Apps
  • Find the App in question and make sure it has a check mark on it’s left
  • Sync your device