Is certificate relate with provisioning profile in iOS?

Question

I know a provisioning profile is created to be used with one certificate and, as I understand it, it can only be used with that one (an one specific id).

My question is if the opposite is also true. If I have a certificate, can that certificate only be used with that profile? If I create another profile for that certificate, it will be valid? Do I need to create another certificate?

Answer 1

It is a one to many relationship. A certificate can have many provisioning profiles associated with it but a single provisioning profile can only be associated with 1 certificate.

So essentially no you will not need to create a new certificate when you create a new provisioning profile.

However you will need to create a new certificate every year as the certificates do expire.

Answer 2

There are 2 kind of certificate:

1. APNS certificate (Dev & Distribution) - Need to create for each app-id/ bundle-id and it is only used to share( sometime .p12 file or .PEM file ) with backend to for push notification
2. Account certificate (Dev & Distribution) - Maximum 2(or either 3, but not more than 3) certificates can be created per apple developer account

Provisioning profiles associate with app-id/ bundle-id with reference of one of account certificate, if you made some changes in app-id(for example; say enabled push-notification or any other service), then your provisioning-profile gets invalid

Both certificate and provisioning-profile is needed to sign the iOS app.

So same account certificates will be used with the as many as app you will have in single developer account, but you will be needed different provisioning-profile for each app-id .

Answer 3

The Adhoc Provisioning Profile can include more than one certificate. Other Provisioning Profiles can include only one certificate