iOS app upload to iTunes Connect results in Invalid Signature issue

Question

I'm working on a hybrid mobile app project (Ionic framework) and releasing to Android, iOS and web. This issue concerns only releasing the application on iOS.

I ran into an issue whereby I suddenly started getting the following email from iTunes Connect after building, archiving and uploading my iOS app to App Store from Xcode.

App Store Connect: Your app "YourAppName" (Apple ID: XXXXXXXXXX) has one or more issues

Dear Developer,

We identified one or more issues with a recent delivery for your app, "YourAppName". Please correct the following issues, then upload again.

Invalid Signature - A sealed resource is missing or invalid. The file at path [YourAppName.app/YourAppName] is not properly signed. Make sure you have signed your application with a distribution certificate, not an ad hoc certificate or a development certificate. Verify that the code signing settings in Xcode are correct at the target level (which override any values at the project level). Additionally, make sure the bundle you are uploading was built using a Release target in Xcode, not a Simulator target. If you are certain your code signing settings are correct, choose "Clean All" in Xcode, delete the "build" directory in the Finder, and rebuild your release target. For more information, please consult https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/Security/Conceptual/CodeSigningGuide/Introduction/Introduction.html

Best regards,

The App Store Team

I tried everything I could find on the internet regarding this issue:

Checking over my certificates, provisioning profiles, recreating them, updating Xcode, building the project again, made sure I'm using a distribution certificate not an ad-hoc certificate, verified the code signing settings in Xcode were correct, verified the bundle was built using the Release target, tried the "Clean All" option, deleted the "build" directory in the finder and rebuilt the release. In short - I tried everything I could find by Apple regarding this issue, also looked up the same issue in StackOverflow and tried a huge variety of the recommended solutions. I tried all of those options multiple times over to make sure I didn't miss anything.

Nothing worked...

Also a note that I was able to upload to App Store without any problems before. There hasn't been any changes to the project which could result in this Invalid Signature issue arising - no certificates have expired, no new ones have been created, no new provisioning profiles have been created. The same profiles and certificates were used which worked just fine some time ago. iTunes Connect just suddenly started responding with this issue.

What else can I try?

Answer 1

I was sceptical at first when I tried this solution but this actually solved my issue.

Find a spare USB stick or an external hard drive.

If your Mac's filesystem is APFS format the external volume using a HPFS Mac OS Extended (Journaled) file system. Move your project over to the freshly formatted HPFS external volume and rebuild it over there . This is important as if you build it on your Mac's APFS volume and then move it over to your HPFS external volume to archive and upload in Xcode this will not work!

The project needs to be built, signed, archived and uploaded ON the HPFS volume.

The uploading to App Store should now work again. It worked for me, hope it works for you as well.

See more information on the solution here