Diagnose App Entitlement Errors on a Remote Mac

An app that installs in debug and silently fails in distribution almost always has an entitlement mismatch: the signed binary claims a capability the provisioning profile never granted, or the profile grants something the App ID was never enabled for. Apple's Technical Note TN2415 documents the resulting errors, including error: 0xe8008016 for "entitlement not supported by your current provisioning profile" and the matching App Store submission error that names the specific disallowed key. The fix is a three-step diff — extract from the binary, extract from the profile, compare — and you can run all three steps on a remote Mac in a couple of minutes.

How Entitlements Get Embedded and Why Mismatches Happen

When Xcode archives your app, it reads your .entitlements file and embeds those key-value pairs into the signed binary. Apple's guide on adding capabilities to your app describes how the Signing & Capabilities pane edits the entitlements plist, adjusts frameworks, and updates signing assets when you add a capability. At install time, and again at App Store review, the system checks that each embedded entitlement key appears in the provisioning profile's Entitlements dictionary. If a key is present in the binary but absent from the profile, the signature is invalid for that use — leading to a failed launch, a TestFlight rejection, or an ITMS-level rejection on submission.

Three common sources of drift:

1. Capability added in Xcode's Signing & Capabilities pane but the App ID was never updated in the developer portal. Xcode writes the key into the .entitlements file; the portal never generated a profile that includes it.
2. Profile regenerated without re-downloading. You enabled Push Notifications on the App ID but Xcode still references the old cached profile.
3. Extension targets. A Notification Service Extension needs its own aps-environment entitlement in its own provisioning profile. Using the host app's profile for the extension is a frequent source of ITMS-90078.

Extracting Entitlements from a Built App Binary

After archiving, locate the .app bundle inside the .xcarchive or unzip the .ipa to find Payload/YourApp.app. Then run:

codesign -d --entitlements :- Payload/YourApp.app

The :- argument writes the plist to stdout. Redirect it to a file for comparison:

codesign -d --entitlements :- Payload/YourApp.app > binary_entitlements.plist

You will see output like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>aps-environment</key>
    <string>production</string>
    <key>com.apple.developer.associated-domains</key>
    <array>
        <string>applinks:example.com</string>
    </array>
</dict>
</plist>

This is what the binary actually contains. It may differ from your .entitlements source file if the build system rewrote keys during signing.

Extracting Allowed Entitlements from the Provisioning Profile

The profile is a CMS-signed envelope. Decode it with:

security cms -D -i path/to/YourApp_Distribution.mobileprovision > profile_decoded.plist

Then pull just the Entitlements dictionary:

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -x -c 'Print :Entitlements' profile_decoded.plist > profile_entitlements.plist

That gives you the exact keys the profile permits. Any key present in binary_entitlements.plist but absent here will cause a signing failure.

The Diff Script

This example runs the extract-and-compare on a remote Mac in one pass. It takes an .ipa and a .mobileprovision as arguments. Treat it as an unexecuted example — run it against your own build, read the stderr, and confirm the result before you ship.

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# Usage: ./diff_entitlements.sh MyApp.ipa MyApp_Distribution.mobileprovision
# Requires: codesign, security, PlistBuddy, plutil, python3 (all stock on macOS).
set -euo pipefail

if [ "$#" -ne 2 ]; then
  echo "Usage: $0 path/to/MyApp.ipa path/to/profile.mobileprovision" >&2
  exit 2
fi

IPA="$1"
PROFILE="$2"
[ -f "$IPA" ]     || { echo "IPA not found: $IPA" >&2; exit 2; }
[ -f "$PROFILE" ] || { echo "Profile not found: $PROFILE" >&2; exit 2; }

umask 077
WORK="$(mktemp -d)"
trap 'rm -rf "$WORK"' EXIT

unzip -q "$IPA" -d "$WORK/ipa"
APP="$(find "$WORK/ipa/Payload" -maxdepth 1 -name '*.app' | head -1)"
[ -n "$APP" ] || { echo "No .app found in Payload/" >&2; exit 1; }

codesign -d --entitlements :- "$APP" > "$WORK/binary.plist"
security cms -D -i "$PROFILE" > "$WORK/profile_full.plist"
/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -x -c 'Print :Entitlements' "$WORK/profile_full.plist" \
  > "$WORK/profile.plist"

plutil -convert json -o "$WORK/binary.json"  "$WORK/binary.plist"
plutil -convert json -o "$WORK/profile.json" "$WORK/profile.plist"

python3 - "$WORK/binary.json" "$WORK/profile.json" <<'PY'
import json, sys
with open(sys.argv[1]) as f: bin_keys  = set(json.load(f).keys())
with open(sys.argv[2]) as f: prof_keys = set(json.load(f).keys())
missing = sorted(bin_keys - prof_keys)
extra   = sorted(prof_keys - bin_keys)
print("=== Keys in binary NOT in profile (likely cause of signing failure) ===")
print("\n".join(missing) if missing else "(none)")
print()
print("=== Keys in profile NOT in binary (unused grants, usually harmless) ===")
print("\n".join(extra) if extra else "(none)")
PY

This compares top-level entitlement keys only. Values — for example, aps-environment of development versus production, or an Associated Domains entry with a trailing slash — also cause failures. When the key sets match but signing still fails, open binary.plist and profile.plist side by side.

Run the script in the browser console terminal on your remote Mac. The first block lists every entitlement your binary claims that the profile does not cover; those are the mismatches to fix. The second block is informational.

Common Mismatches and Their Root Causes

aps-environment missing from profile. Push Notifications was enabled on the App ID after the profile was generated, or you regenerated the App ID and never re-downloaded the profile. Regenerate the Distribution profile, download it, then archive again.

com.apple.developer.icloud-services rejected. iCloud entitlements (CloudKit, CloudDocuments) require iCloud enabled on the App ID and a specific CloudKit container listed. A container referenced locally but never created in the portal will not appear in the profile.

com.apple.developer.associated-domains mismatch. The profile entries must exactly match those in the binary. A trailing slash, uppercase letter, or extra suffix on one side fails verification. The diff output surfaces this directly.

Extension bundle with the wrong profile. A Share, Notification Service, or Widget extension has its own binary and its own provisioning profile. Inspect it separately:

codesign -d --entitlements :- Payload/YourApp.app/PlugIns/YourExtension.appex

Fixing the Mismatch

Once the diff identifies the offending key:

1. Enable the capability on the App ID at developer.apple.com under Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles → Identifiers.
2. Regenerate the Distribution provisioning profile for that App ID.
3. Download the new profile and either let Xcode consume it or drop it in ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profiles/ on the remote Mac.
4. Re-archive the app. With manual signing, reference the new profile explicitly.
5. Re-run the diff on the new IPA to confirm the fix before resubmitting.

Do not regenerate every profile at once if one capability is affected. Regenerating changes the profile UUID, which can require updates in your CI configuration.

Which Figment Plan Fits This Work

Entitlement debugging is command-line work. codesign, security, PlistBuddy, and plutil are stock on macOS, and they all run on the virtual Intel macOS VM at $29/month, accessed from the browser console. That plan is a fit when you are inspecting archives, comparing profiles, and iterating on .entitlements files — the diff workflow above runs there without modification. Intel Xcode 26 or earlier can also cross-compile and sign arm64 device and universal macOS targets from the same VM; executing arm64 binaries, Xcode 27, or visionOS work requires an M-series Mac from $95/month.

If you are standing up distribution signing from scratch and want the certificate, profile, and CI pipeline configured before the first archive, the Managed Build Mac at $249/month includes one M-series Mac, CI setup, backups, monitoring, and 30 minutes of monthly support — the signing environment is set up by the team that runs the host. Physical Mac plans collect requests until supply is confirmed, so ask for a quote with the exact toolchain, RAM, and disk you need.

Start a Figment Mac plan → or see the full Mac Hosting lineup.

Related guides:

• Access Xcode GUI Over VNC on a Remote Mac
• Run Two Xcode Versions Side by Side Remotely
• Run a GitHub Actions Self-Hosted Runner on a Remote Mac