1. Best Mac For App Development
2. Mac App Development Certificate Templates
3. Mac App Development Tutorial
4. Mac Certificate Errors
5. Apps For Mac

macOS and Windows code signing is supported. Windows is dual code-signed (SHA1 & SHA256 hashing algorithms).

In the Keychain Access app on your Mac, choose Keychain Access Certificate Assistant Create a Certificate Authority. Enter a name for the certificate authority. Choose an Identity type, then choose the type of certificate to be issued by the certificate authority. For software and applications that are downloaded from places other than the Mac App Store, developers can get a Developer ID certificate and submit their software for notarization by Apple. Digitally signing software with a unique Developer ID and including a notarization ticket from Apple lets Gatekeeper verify that the software is not known.

On a macOS development machine, a valid and appropriate identity from your keychain will be automatically used.

Tip

See article Notarizing your Electron application.

Env Name	Description
CSC_LINK	The HTTPS link (or base64-encoded data, or file:// link, or local path) to certificate (*.p12 or *.pfx file). Shorthand ~/ is supported (home directory).
CSC_KEY_PASSWORD	The password to decrypt the certificate given in CSC_LINK.
CSC_NAME	macOS-only Name of certificate (to retrieve from login.keychain). Useful on a development machine (not on CI) if you have several identities (otherwise don’t specify it).
CSC_IDENTITY_AUTO_DISCOVERY	true or false. Defaults to true — on a macOS development machine valid and appropriate identity from your keychain will be automatically used.
CSC_KEYCHAIN	The keychain name. Used if CSC_LINK is not specified. Defaults to system default keychain.

Tip

Best Mac For App Development

If you are building Windows on macOS and need to set a different certificate and password (than the ones set in CSC_* env vars) you can use WIN_CSC_LINK and WIN_CSC_KEY_PASSWORD.

Windows¶

To sign an app on Windows, there are two types of certificates:

• EV Code Signing Certificate
• Code Signing Certificate

Both certificates work with auto-update. The regular (and often cheaper) Code Signing Certificate shows a warning during installation that goes away once enough users installed your application and you’ve built up trust. The EV Certificate has more trust and thus works immediately without any warnings. However, it is not possible to export the EV Certificate as it is bound to a physical USB dongle. Thus, you can’t export the certificate for signing code on a CI, such as AppVeyor.

If you are using an EV Certificate, you need to provide win.certificateSubjectName in your electron-builder configuration.

If you use Windows 7, please ensure that PowerShell is updated to version 3.0.

If you are on Linux or Mac and you want sign a Windows app using EV Code Signing Certificate, please use the guide for Unix systems.

Travis, AppVeyor and other CI Servers¶

To sign app on build server you need to set CSC_LINK, CSC_KEY_PASSWORD:

1. Export certificate. Consider to not use special characters (for bash[1]) in the password because “values are not escaped when your builds are executed”.
2. Encode file to base64 (macOS: base64 -i yourFile.p12 -o envValue.txt, Linux: base64 yourFile.p12 > envValue.txt).

Or upload *.p12 file (e.g. on Google Drive, use direct link generator to get correct download link).

1. Set CSC_LINK and CSC_KEY_PASSWORD environment variables. See Travis or AppVeyor documentation. Recommended to set it in the CI Project Settings, not in the .travis.yml/appveyor.yml. If you use link to file (not base64 encoded data), make sure to escape special characters (for bash[1]) accordingly.

Mac App Development Certificate Templates

In case of AppVeyor, don’t forget to click on lock icon to “Toggle variable encryption”.

Keep in mind that Windows is not able to handle enviroment variable values longer than 8192 characters, thus if the base64 representation of your certificate exceeds that limit, try re-exporting the certificate without including all the certificates in the certification path (they are not necessary, but the Certificate Manager export wizard ticks the option by default), otherwise the encoded value will be truncated.

[1] printf '%qn' '<url>'

Where to Buy Code Signing Certificate¶

See Get a code signing certificate for Windows (platform: “Microsoft Authenticode”).Please note — Gatekeeper only recognises Apple digital certificates.

How to Export Certificate on macOS¶

Mac App Development Tutorial

1. Open Keychain.
2. Select login keychain, and My Certificates category.
3. Select all required certificates (hint: use cmd-click to select several):
4. Developer ID Application: to sign app for macOS.
5. 3rd Party Mac Developer Application: and 3rd Party Mac Developer Installer: to sign app for MAS (Mac App Store).
6. Developer ID Application: and Developer ID Installer to sign app and installer for distribution outside of the Mac App Store.
7. Mac Developer: to sign development builds for testing Mac App Store submissions (mas-dev target). You also need a provisioning profile in the working directory that matches this certificate and the device being used for testing.

Mac Certificate Errors

Please note – you can select as many certificates as needed. No restrictions on electron-builder side. All selected certificates will be imported into temporary keychain on CI server.4. Open context menu and Export.

How to Disable Code Signing During the Build Process on macOS¶

Apps For Mac

To disable Code Signing when building for macOS leave all the above vars unset except for CSC_IDENTITY_AUTO_DISCOVERY which needs to be set to false. This can be done by running export CSC_IDENTITY_AUTO_DISCOVERY=false.

Another way — set mac.identity to null. You can pass aditional configuration using CLI as well: -c.mac.identity=null.