Hi everyone,
My developer account expires in 2 weeks. I will at some point renew it.
But supposing I just do a Loop build on my phone right now. Would that last for a full year? Or does it only last until my developer account expires?
Not sure who all the loop people are, just tagging a bunch of y’all! 
@TomH @ClaudnDaye @bkh @Trying @Marie @CatLady
Keep a current developer account and update loop at least yearly. To see your last build date, click the settings wheel at the bottom of the Loop app, click Issue Report, and then look at the tenth line down for “buildDateString”.
Your app will expire one year from that unless you rebuild again. When you rebuild, the timer is reset but everything will stop working if that dev license lapses regardless of how many times and how frequently you re-build.
Not sure if that answered your specific question but that’s generally how it works.
@Eric If using Xcode, it should last for the year if built before you expire. A browser build should last 90 days, after the build occurs despite your account expiring. All this is predicated on Apple not having changed something in the latest xcode release. There are new instructions on the Loop docs website to advise how to renew your distribution certificate; Marion just recently updated them.
So that means browser builds need to happen every 90 days?!?
This depends on whether you are doing an xcode build. If you do that, the magic
incantation before you build is:
rm ~/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning\ Profiles/*.mobileprovision
That will cause the build to create a new provisioning certificate with today’s date, and I heard this enables your code to run for a year even if your developer account expires. ClaudnDaye says otherwise, but I see a posting on stackoverflow at ios - What happens after Apple Developer License expires? - Stack Overflow that says
If your Apple Developer Program membership expires, your apps will no longer be available for download and you won’t be able to submit new apps or updates. You’ll lose access to prerelease software, Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles, and TSIs. However, your apps will still function for users who have already installed or downloaded them, and you will still have access to App Store Connect and free development resources.
That article also says that if it’s an Enterprise Developer account rather than a regular Developer account, in that case the expiration does kill all the apps.
I don’t know enough about browser build to comment on that approach, except that I am aware of the 90 day limit for beta code installed via testflight.
Yes, the browser build needs to occur every 90 days. However, there is an auto-build/download to TestFlight function that makes it pretty painless. The auto system builds every Wednesday about 8am UTC and sends it to TestFlight so you always have a current version to activate.
I don’t keep up with things day be day so it is definitely possible that what i knew has changed!
I never use browser build so i don’t even follow that closely at all.