iOS Question Developing For Personal Use - Apple Developer Acct Required?

[TomKatt]

Hello all -

I searched the forum but did not see anything that clearly answers my question - If I desire to develop for my own personal use, apps only to be installed on my personal devices only (no distribution through the App Store), do I need to pay the annual $99 fee to create an Apple Developer Account? I have a local Mac capable of running Xcode 13.2 and plan to compile locally.

I note the following statement on the Apple Developer webpage:

Do I need to enroll to install apps on a device?​

No. You can install apps on a device for free with Xcode. You’ll only need to enroll if you’d like to distribute apps, access beta software, and integrate with capabilities such as Siri, Apple Pay, and iCloud.


Thanks in advance.

 

[hatzisn]

As far as my knowledge goes you need to have an apple account in order to get certificates and distribution profiles (even if they are ad hoc).

 

[Alexander Stolte]

I searched the forum but did not see anything that clearly answers my question - If I desire to develop for my own personal use, apps only to be installed on my personal devices only (no distribution through the App Store), do I need to pay the annual $99 fee to create an Apple Developer Account? I have a local Mac capable of running Xcode 13.2 and plan to compile locally.

Once you want to have your app on a real phone, you need a developer account. You can develop the app in the simulator, that's free, you just need a mac. And in the simulator many functions are not available like the camera.

 

[Jmu5667]

yes