Hoorah for test apps! Testing your app is highly recommended, and for a good reason. While the simulator is great to get an idea of what you app will look and behave like, it's not always accurate (hence the "simulate"). The only way to know how your app will truly function is to test it on a native device.

But before we get going on publishing your test app, you'll need to have three things ready:

1) Have an Apple developer account. This is required by Apple to publish any apps (and so is the $99 fee...oh well).

2) Have your Apple developer account uploaded into your AppMakr account. If you haven't done that already, here's how.

3) Have your device registered in your Apple developer account so you can test out the ad hoc app you're about to publish. Here's how to set that up.

 

If you've got all of those checked off, then let's get ad hoc publishing! Follow the instructions below step by step to make sure you've hit every button and uploaded every file you need. If anything's missing, you won't be able to publish.

 

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1) Select the app you want to publish from your dashboard and then select "Create Test App" on the publish tab. (Ignore the terrible AQI score—this is just a guinea pig app I created.) **Always choose the certificate at the top of the list to publish with, if you've had more than one uploaded into AppMakr. The top one is the most recent and therefore the active certificate.**

 

 

2) Click the link to open up the App ID creation page. **Do this in the Safari browser. Any other browser may not interact with Apple's site properly.** After clicking this link, you will be working simultaneously within your AppMakr account and your Apple developer account. The AppMakr iOS publishing process has been designed to interact with Apple's platform.

 

 

3) Once you have the App ID creation page open, transfer the information given to you in your AppMakr account in steps 3 through 5 on the publishing page and into the correlating fields in your Apple account.

So, take this information from your AppMakr account:

 

 

And enter the values in your Apple account. Below is a picture of what the page in Apple will look like and where you'll enter and select the information given to you by your AppMakr account. After you've filled in each field accordingly, hit "submit".

 

 

Nice, you've created your App ID! Now you need to enable it for push notifications. (Note: even if you don't plan on sending push notifications, you'll need to enable your app for push notifications as part of the publishing process, otherwise it can't be published. While your app will be enabled for push, you can simply choose never to send push notifications and nothing will ever happen.)

 

4) Once you've hit submit in your Apple account, it will take you to a different page with your app ID's (see the next steps). Your AppMakr account, here, will instruct you to search for the app ID name you just created in the list of app ID's and then select it to configure it for push notifications. The next steps will show you how to do just that.

 

 

5) In your Apple account, you should be on a page with a list of App ID's. Find your app in this list (you can search for it by hitting command + F, then entering the app name to highlight it on the page) and then hit "Configure" on the right hand side of the page.

 

 

6)  Once you hit "Configure", you'll be taken to this page. As instructed in your AppMakr account (in step 4 of this tutorial), check off the box next to "Enable for Apple Push Notification service". Then hit "Configure" in the row of Production Push SSL Certificate.

 

 

7)  After hitting "Configure", this screen will appear. Hit "Continue".

 

 

8)  At this point, go back to your AppMakr account and hit "Generate New Certificate Signing Request". This creates the file you'll need to proceed to the next step in Apple. Once it's generated, you'll see the option to download it appear underneath the generate button. Clicking this will automatically download a .csr file to the downloads folder on your computer. Once you've downloaded the .csr, return to your Apple account.

 

 

9) Here, you'll upload the .csr you just downloaded. Hit "Choose File".

 

 

10) Select the .csr file from your downloads folder.

 

 

11)  As instructed in your AppMakr account, continue through the next steps in your Apple account by hitting "generate", then "continue", then "download" when prompted. See the next steps.

 

 

 

13) Generate:

 

 

14) Continue:

 

 

15) Download. Here' you'll download a .cer file that you'll be uploading in your AppMakr account. Once you've hit download, return to your AppMakr account.

 

 

16) You'll upload the .cer file you just downloaded, in step 12 here of the AppMakr publishing process. Hit "choose file".

 

 

17) Select the .cer file from the downloads folder on your computer and click "open".

 

 

 

18) Once the .cer file is selected, hit "upload". You'll know the file has been uploaded when you see the message below.

 

 

Great, you're almost done! Now you just have to provision your app and you'll be all set.

 

19) Click the link below and your Apple account will open to the Distribution Provisioning Profile page. 

 

 

20) Once this page opens, hit "New Profile" in the top right hand corner. **IMPORTANT: Make sure that you are creating a new profile under the "Distribution" tab and not the "Development" tab, as the processes for both look very similar. You want to create a DISTRIBUTION profile.**

 

21) Once you've hit the "New Profile" button, return to your AppMakr account to collect the information you'll need to put into your Apple account. Follow the instructions here, below, in step 22 of this tutorial.

 

 

22) As outlined in your AppMakr account in the previous step, select "Ad Hoc" for Distribution Method. Then, enter your profile name, select your app ID and select the devices you want to test on. Any devices you registered with this account (see point 3 in the first paragraph of this post) will be displayed here. Check off any devices you wish to test this app on—Apple lets you choose up to 100 devices. Once you've filled in all of the information, hit "Submit".

 

 

23) You'll then be taken to a list of Provisioning Profiles. Search for your app ID (again, you can do this by hitting command + F, then typing in your profile name to highlight it on the page) and it should list as pending. Wait a few seconds and then refresh the page.

 

24) Once you've refreshed the page, find the profile name again and it should say "Download". If it does not, just keep refreshing the page until it does. When the download button appears, click on it and your .mobileprovision file will download. **Apple is a little strange here in that nothing happens once you've downloaded—no fanfare, no notification. Don't click the download button several times if it seems like nothing happened. Check your downloads folder and you should see a .mobileprovision file as the most recent download.

 

25) So close!!!! Return to your AppMakr account and upload the .mobileprovision file you just downloaded from Apple. Hit "Choose file".

 

 

26) Select the .mobileprovision file from your downloads folder and hit "open".

 

27) Hit "upload" and wait for a message that will say "uploaded successfully", like in step 18 of this tutorial. Once the file has been uploaded, a submit button will appear in this box. Hit "Submit" and your app is published!

 

 

 

Now that you've published your test app, simply wait for it to finish building in the AppBuilds section of your AppMakr account. Once it's finished, you'll be able to email the AppDrop link to the email account which you've associated with your AppMakr account. Open that email in your device and download the link provided. Then you'll be able to test your app in all its glory. :)

 

Happy testing!