Sign Mac code for distribution using either Xcode or command-line tools.
Build a zip archive, disk image, or installer package for distributing your Mac software.
This article is my brain dump on the subject. It is meant to be a guide on the things that you’ll need to know about when distributing a Mac app outside the App Store, rather than a how-to tutorial. My hope is that having everything listed here will help demystify the process for beginners, and the descriptions of my own process will be useful as starting points.
The easiest way is to create a paid macOS app is to simply put a price tag in the App Store, but it’s a common practice nowadays to provide a free download that can later be upgraded to a pro version. In this article, we’ll use our knowledge of serial numbers and asymmetric cryptography to create license files that cannot be reverse-engineered and use them to activate an app’s premium features.
Set up a store to distribute your macOS applications outside of the Mac App Store for increased revenue and flexibility. I recommend FastSpring for this.
Modern FastSpring storefronts come in three standard flavors.
You can join the league of pro Mac devs and stay in control of app distribution, offer upgrade pricing, take care of your customers, and build a thriving business. Best of all: You can have all that in a day.
Swift framework to deal with licensing and time-based trial periods in macOS apps.
I regularly see folks run into problems with their Developer ID signing identities. Historically I pointed them to my posts on this thread, but I’ve decided to collect these ideas together in one place.
If you have questions or comments, start a new thread here on DevForums and tag it with Developer ID so that I see it.