How do you manage iOS code-signing certificates with Fastlane Match?

Short answer

Fastlane Match automates managing and securely sharing development and distribution certificates and provisioning profiles, encrypted in a private Git repository shared by the team and CI/CD servers.

Explanation

iOS certificate and code-signing issues are among the most confusing development hurdles. Match solves this centrally: instead of each developer creating arbitrary certificates and disrupting the developer account, a shared distribution certificate is generated and encrypted with a password. Fastlane then synchronizes it to any device or server with one command.

Code example

// In the file Fastfile:
lane :release do
  match(type: "appstore", readonly: is_ci)
  build_app(workspace: "MyApp.xcworkspace", scheme: "MyApp")
  upload_to_app_store
end

Common mistakes

• Letting distribution certificates expire without renewing them before automated CI/CD builds.

Follow-up questions

• How do you build a complete CI/CD pipeline for React Native projects with GitHub Actions?

Sources

• fastlane docs — match