Building and Shipping Mac and iOS Apps Without Ever Opening Xcode

Building and Shipping Mac and iOS Apps Without Ever Opening Xcode

Lately, I've heard several Apple-related podcasters talk about how bad Xcode is, and how Apple needs to make vibe-coding Mac and iOS apps better by making Xcode less inscrutable. They're not wrong, but also I don't understand why they're even opening Xcode in the first place.

With a little bit of pre-work, you can vibe code Mac and iOS apps to your heart's content without looking at Xcode anymore. And if you're ever in doubt about how to make any of the following work, point Claude Code or your LLM coding tool of choice to this blog post, and let it figure it out. That's literally its job - figuring out things you don't want to have to.

TL;DR

• Xcode.app must be installed, but it never has to be open. xcodebuild, notarytool, stapler, and devicectl all live inside Xcode and run fine from a shell.
• A few one-time steps do need the GUI (or an interactive terminal): sign into your Apple ID, create a Developer ID certificate, store a notarization password. After that, builds and deploys are fully headless.
• The Mac app ships via one script - scripts/release.sh - which you write once. It runs the whole chain: archive → Developer ID sign → notarize → staple → install to /Applications.
• Signing is certificate-and-keychain based. The signing key lives in the login keychain; xcodebuild finds it automatically. No secrets in the repo.

The one-time setup is the only part with any friction, so let's get it out of the way first.

Install Xcode

You do have to have Xcode installed - there's no getting around that, because build depends on tools that live inside Xcode.app. Once Xcode is installed, make sure it's the selected command line toolchain, and not /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools. If the output of the check is /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer, you're in good shape:

If it DOES return the path for the standalone CommandLineTools instead, point it to Xcode instead:

sudo xcode-select --switch /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer

NOTE: The name "Command Line Tools" can be confusing. This is because there's a standalone Command Line Tools package, available with xcode-select --install, which is the /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools version. This contains clang and git, but not the iOS SDK, notarytool, devicectl, and other items needed for full app development. The complete toolchain is inside Xcode.app, at /Applications/Xcode.app/Developer, and it has everything you need. If you have Xcode installed, you don't need the standalone Command Line Tools.

Install XcodeGen

Xcode and its command line tools aren't enough to generate and manage Xcode projects automatically. For that, you're going to need XcodeGen. You can download it from GitHub or install it using Homebrew:

brew install xcodegen

Long story short, Xcode projects are actually folders that macOS makes appear as files, and they contain everything about your project needed to create and compile your app. Xcode constantly modifies the files and file references, and it creates issues for git repositories. XcodeGen creates a project.yml (YAML) file with all your project settings, and then on every build, it recreates the entire .xcodeproj folder using that project.yml file. Only the YAML file has to be committed to git, and the whole .xcodeproj can be ignored from git's perspective.

Configure Xcode, Once

You do need to set up Xcode initially in order to never have to look at it again.

Xcode License and Additional Components

First, either accept its license and install its additional components, or do it through the command line:

sudo xcodebuild -license accept

Setup Your Apple Developer Account in Xcode

Next, open Xcode, click on Settings → Accounts and click on + to add your account.

NOTE: You have to have a paid Apple Developer account in order to distribute and notarize your apps. And you will want them notarized in order to install them on your Mac and iOS devices and not have the OSes decide they're malware and delete them.

Create a Developer ID Application Certificate

Once that's done, create a Developer ID Application certificate (Settings → Accounts → your Apple ID → Manage Certificates… → + → Developer ID Application), which creates a cert for signing the shipped .app bundle.

Please note that a Developer ID Application certificate and your Apple Development certificate are two separate things. The Apple Development identity is for building and running on your own devices - pushing to your iPhone, local debugging. The Developer ID Application identity is for the notarized .app that survives Gatekeeper and runs on someone else's Mac. The release script wants that second one.

Creating the certificate in Xcode installs both the certificate and its private key into your login keychain. That private key is what actually does the signing, and it cannot be re-downloaded - so don't delete it, and back up your keychain. When in doubt, ask your LLM of choice about them and have it help you get set up. It's the one that's going to be using Xcode for you anyway.

Store a Notarization Credential – Once, in Terminal

Notarization uploads your signed app to Apple for a malware scan. notarytool authenticates using a stored keychain profile that you create once, interactively - it prompts for an app-specific password, and there's no way around the prompt:

xcrun notarytool store-credentials "MyAppProfile" --apple-id "your@email.com" --team-id "TEAMID12345"

A few things worth knowing here:

• Name the profile after the app. Don't borrow another app's profile - it'll work on your machine and then silently break on someone else's.
• The app-specific password is not your Apple ID password. Generate one at appleid.apple.com → Sign-In & Security → App-Specific Passwords.
• These passwords go stale silently whenever you change your Apple ID password. A 401 invalid credentials out of notarization almost always means "go make a fresh app-specific password," not "your setup is broken."

Confirm it's stored:

xcrun notarytool list-credentials

Side topic: I store my app-specific passwords in a 1Password vault that Claude Code has access to. That way whenever I'm creating a new app, I can tell it to create the notarization credential for me, and it knows to check its 1Password vault for the password. The whole point of using the LLM in the first place is to avoid doing things manually that you don't want to do.

Set Up a Local.xconfig File and Add It to .gitignore

Real signing needs your team ID and bundle prefix, and I put those in a Local.xconfig file:

// Local.xconfig
TEAM_ID = TEAMID12345
BUNDLE_PREFIX = com.example

Again, if in doubt, ask Claude Code or your LLM of choice to create this for you.

Set Up the Agent Tools

Create the Deploy Script

Deployment on my apps is handled via a script called release.sh that lives in a scripts folder inside the repo. Without it, I don't have an automated build pipeline. I had Claude Code create mine:

I told Claude, more or less: I want to archive, Developer ID-sign, notarize, staple, and install this app to /Applications without ever opening Xcode. Write me a script that does the whole chain and fails loudly if any step breaks.

It didn't need me to explain the pipeline, because the pipeline isn't a secret - archive with xcodebuild, export with -exportArchive and an ExportOptions.plist, submit with notarytool --wait, attach the ticket with stapler, check with spctl. That's the documented, conventional way to ship a Developer ID Mac app, and the model knows it.

What it needed from me was the project-specific stuff: the scheme name, the team ID, what to call the notary profile, where to install the result. Then it wrote a first draft, we ran it, it broke, and we fixed it. That loop is not a failure mode - it's just the process. I always look at AI workflows as works in progress, but it doesn't take long before you can stop tweaking things and just start working.

This is the actual script from one of my app repos:

#!/bin/bash
set -euo pipefail

cd "$(dirname "$0")/.."

SCHEME="MyApp"
TEAM_ID="TEAMID12345"
NOTARY_PROFILE="MyAppProfile"
EXPORT_DIR="/tmp/MyApp-export"
APP_NAME="MyApp.app"
INSTALL_DIR="/Applications"

# Pre-flight checks
command -v xcodegen >/dev/null 2>&1 || { echo "xcodegen is required"; exit 1; }
xcrun notarytool list-credentials 2>/dev/null | grep -q "$NOTARY_PROFILE" || { echo "Notary profile '$NOTARY_PROFILE' not found"; exit 1; }

# Generate project
xcodegen generate

# Archive
xcodebuild -scheme "$SCHEME" -configuration Release archive -archivePath "$EXPORT_DIR/MyApp.xcarchive"

# Export with Developer ID signing
xcodebuild -exportArchive -archivePath "$EXPORT_DIR/MyApp.xcarchive" -exportPath "$EXPORT_DIR" -exportOptionsPlist ExportOptions.plist

# Notarize
xcrun notarytool submit "$EXPORT_DIR/$APP_NAME" --keychain-profile "$NOTARY_PROFILE" --wait

# Staple
xcrun stapler staple "$EXPORT_DIR/$APP_NAME"

# Verify
spctl --assess --verbose "$EXPORT_DIR/$APP_NAME"

# Install
cp -R "$EXPORT_DIR/$APP_NAME" "$INSTALL_DIR/$APP_NAME"
/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -f "$INSTALL_DIR/$APP_NAME"

# Re-verify installed bundle
spctl --assess --verbose "$INSTALL_DIR/$APP_NAME"

It looks more complicated than it is, but it is a series of steps that you'd have to know need performed. Again, this is why you talk to your LLM, tell it what you want, and have it help build your workflow.

Some things to note:

• set -euo pipefail halts the script on any failing command immediately instead of blundering forward. There's no half-finished state that looks like success.
• cd "$(dirname "$0")/.." means the script hops to the repo root regardless of where you invoked it from, so ./scripts/release.sh works whether you're in the repo root or three directories down.
• The pre-flight block checks that xcodegen exists and that the notary profile is actually stored before spending five minutes on an archive that's doomed to fail at step five.
• The last two steps re-verify the installed bundle, not just the exported one. Belt and suspenders, but I've had a copy step silently mangle a bundle before and I'd rather find out from the script than from Gatekeeper three days later when it deletes my app for me.

Create CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md

release.sh gives you a one-command deploy. CLAUDE.md (or AGENTS.md for basically every other model under the sun) is what makes the agent actually use it without being told every single time. I had Claude create my CLAUDE.md itself after going back and forth about the build process. Now whenever I create a new app, I tell it to reference the repo for one of my other apps and use the same methodology.

That's It

And that's the whole one-time setup. From here on, nothing needs a mouse.

How the Build Actually Runs - No GUI in the Loop

Everything below is plain command-line invocation. Xcode.app never launches; these tools live inside it but run standalone. This is exactly what Claude Code executes through its shell.

Fast, Unsigned Checks

For "does it compile / do the tests pass," you don't need signing at all. CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED=NO gives you an ad-hoc build:

xcodebuild -scheme MyApp -configuration Debug build CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED=NO

It compiles and runs in a simulator, but Gatekeeper rejects it and entitlements like iCloud KVS and App Group don't bind. That's the fast inner loop.

The Mac Release Pipeline

One command does the entire shippable chain - the script from Part two:

./scripts/release.sh

Archive, Developer ID export, notarize, staple, verify, install. If any step fails it stops and tells you which one broke. Need a different notary profile? Override it:

TZED_NOTARY_PROFILE=OtherProfile ./scripts/release.sh

Deploying to a Real iPhone, Headless

iOS has no notarization step - that's a Mac-distribution concept. Getting a build onto a connected iPhone is xcodebuild plus devicectl, both inside Xcode's toolchain:

xcodebuild -scheme MyApp -configuration Debug archive -archivePath /tmp/MyApp.xcarchive -allowProvisioningUpdates
devicectl device install --device "$UDID" --path /tmp/MyApp.xcarchive/Products/Applications/MyApp.app

devicectl list devices lists connected and paired devices with their UDIDs. Device builds sign with the Apple Development identity (not Developer ID) plus a development provisioning profile, which -allowProvisioningUpdates fetches for you.

How Code Signing Works When There's No GUI

If you've only ever signed apps by ticking a box in Xcode, it's worth understanding what's actually going on under there, because none of it needs the GUI at build time.

• The private key does the signing. When you created that Developer ID Application certificate, Apple issued a certificate and your Mac generated a matching private key, both landing in your login keychain. codesign (which xcodebuild calls) uses the private key to sign the binary; the certificate - which chains up to Apple's root - gets embedded so anyone can verify it.
• Automatic signing picks the identity for you. The release script uses signingStyle: automatic, so xcodebuild selects the right identity by team ID and pulls any needed provisioning profile from Apple on the fly. No profiles checked into the repo.
• Entitlements bind at sign time. Each target has a .entitlements file (sandbox, network client, iCloud KVS, App Group). These only take effect when the app is signed with a real team identity, which is the other reason ad-hoc builds can't ship: the iCloud and App-Group entitlements quietly don't bind without the team prefix, and you get to spend an hour wondering why your key-value store is empty.
• Notarization isn't signing. Signing proves who built the app. Notarization is a separate step where Apple scans the signed app for malware and issues a ticket; stapling attaches that ticket so Gatekeeper trusts the app offline. For a hidden-UI menu bar app (LSUIElement), notarization is what keeps XProtect from flagging it.
• The secrets never touch git. The signing private key lives in the login keychain. The notarization app-specific password lives in the notarytool keychain profile. Neither ever gets written into the repo.

You can verify any signed build by hand:

codesign -dvvv /Applications/MyApp.app
spctl --assess --verbose /Applications/MyApp.app

What the Agent Actually Uses

There's no magic here. Claude Code drives all of this through a plain, non-interactive shell - there's no special "build" MCP server or plugin doing something clever. It's xcodebuild, xcrun notarytool, xcrun stapler, spctl, codesign, devicectl, xcodegen, and swift. Standard CLI tools, the same ones we'd use ourselves.

The glue is the CLAUDE.md from Part two. It tells the agent the notary-profile convention, the two build paths, and that shipping means release.sh. The result is Claude just runs the thing, without me re-explaining it every session.

The one step that stays interactive is notarytool store-credentials, and that's a choice rather than a limitation: you could pass --password and script it, but that means putting an app-specific password in your shell history. Type it once by hand, let the keychain or 1Password hold it, and everything downstream is automated.

Why Xcode Never Needs to Be Open

Put the GUI workflow next to the headless one and the whole thing just lines up:

The GUI is only ever needed for that one-time setup. After that, you never have to open Xcode again.