Quick answer: Import the certificate and profile from secrets into a temporary keychain at build time, select manual signing with the matching identity, and keep profiles current.

iOS signing in CI fails because the runner's keychain is empty. Import what it needs at build time. Here is the reliable setup.

How to fix it

1. Import into a temp keychain

Create a dedicated keychain in the job, import the .p12 certificate from a secret, and unlock it for the build.

2. Install the profile

Copy the provisioning profile into the profiles directory and reference its UUID so Xcode finds a matching identity.

3. Track expiry

Add a reminder or check for certificate and profile expiry so signing does not break the week they lapse.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.

Reproduce it once with full context and the fix writes itself. The hunt is the expensive part.