Permission Denied when running Mac app after upgrading to XCode 4.4 Permission Denied when running Mac app after upgrading to XCode 4.4 xcode xcode

Permission Denied when running Mac app after upgrading to XCode 4.4


I found this on an iPhone 5 (iOS 6.0) newly set up for development. I had to manually launch the app on the phone, and it said "Are you sure you want to launch this app signed by this devloper?" Once I approved that, the "permission denied" went away and it now launches from Xcode.


Unlock the Device

Try simply unlocking your device before running on it. I was stumped by this very same issue. Upon building and running with no changes to OS, environment, code, etc., I was receiving the error.

Similar questions have been asked here and here, but were not helpful in this situation.


This is caused by an entitlement (and, presumably, having the wrong kind of certificate for it).

  • If you have the sandbox enabled, and try to sign with a Developer ID certificate, your application will crash on launch (as of Lion—I haven't tried this on Mountain Lion).
  • If you have iCloud enabled, and try to sign with a Developer ID certificate, your application will not launch at all—in Xcode, you'll get the error message in the question, and in Finder, the application will launch ever so briefly and then get SIGKILLed.

Presumably, there is a right kind of certificate with which one can sign an app in order to be able to test with a sandbox and maybe even iCloud that you can obtain if you have a Mac Developer Program membership. A Developer ID certificate is not that kind of cert.

(That solves my problem, anyway. Dennis, what kind of cert were you trying to sign with?)