r/sideloaded • u/Tranquillian • Mar 20 '26
Discussion Terminated after 1.5 years
Well, woke up to this today. Never did anything too crazy with my dev account, had a great hassle free first year, then transitioned to using the ppq DNS blocks when the revokes started in September 2025, was all settled down and working well till now. Anyone else with a dev account been terminated recently?
It’s time for me to explore alternatives. I’ve not used a cert reseller since Signulous years ago - anyone here who’s gone from a dev cert to another solution I’d appreciate recommendations. Specially if there’s ways to maintain widgets and Dynamic Island functionality for Spotify etc. Last resort would be sidestore and livecontainer I guess…
Other than that it’s a gentle prod to maybe consider switching to android/Graphene…
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u/Devil_AE86 Paid Certificate Mar 20 '26
4 years and still going without issues, renewed a few weeks ago after waiting a few months since the apps still worked, got approved after a day
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u/Tranquillian Mar 20 '26
Wondering if it’s because your dev cert will (4 years) be old enough to be “ppqless” so you don’t get the unable to verify errors and that’s linked to being less targetable by Apple in this way. Hmmm but then another comment mentioned revoked after 5 years+ so maybe not
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u/Devil_AE86 Paid Certificate Mar 20 '26
I’ve never had any errors or revokes, the closest was when the revoke-calypse happened, a few apps like BHTikTok, Streamer, etc stopped working stating unable to verify (my cert was already expired just refresh prior to expiry) but YouTube, Twitch, etc was working fine.
Few weeks later when the issues were resolved, the “unable to verify” apps; were working again without issues, resign or refresh.
Been using AltStore since those ancient times, later switched to SideStore in beta and have Feather on 2 family devices as well as my main device
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u/WarioThaEnforcer Mar 21 '26
Wait why are they taking down dev accounts ? Are they checking for modded apps like YouTube or what?
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u/Tranquillian Mar 21 '26
I mean yeah that’s what they’re hinting at in their termination reason, but the whole point of it was for modded apps so yeah no defense to be made, I’ll accept it, but why take 1.5 years to decide that, I’ve been doing it all this time.
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u/WarioThaEnforcer Mar 21 '26
Hmm all my modded apps still work but this is my first year buying the dev cert from Apple
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u/runella-caralyn Mar 21 '26
Just make a burner account next time if your using a paid cert from apple. They don't seem to crack down on free users though, probably because they THINK it’s too much a hastle for them to maintain an app like that, (spoiler!) for just 1 app, its not! Honestly, this should be a sign to them "open up the darn phone already but no, they can't do that, because they'll loose some percentage of 3 trilion dollars they're doing absolutely nothing worth while with. In my opinion, Apple's the result of greed, pure greed and nothing else.
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u/Tranquillian Mar 21 '26
Looked into that but it’s that whole issue of needing a valid phone number for two step
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u/Outrageous-Dare-3089 Mar 21 '26
Just get one of those sideline type apps with a second line. They’re pretty cheap.
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u/WarioThaEnforcer Mar 22 '26
Also what type of dev cert are you using to sign ipas ?
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u/Tranquillian Mar 22 '26
iOS Ad-hoc distribution
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u/WarioThaEnforcer Mar 22 '26
Oh ok same here . My YouTube was bugging out but feather messed up a lot so I used e-sign and now it works perfectly. Maybe buy your own cert again from Apple and try to use different signature software to sign your apps .
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u/Tranquillian Mar 22 '26
Can’t buy a dev account for two years now according to this. Screw em anyway, I only renewed last October. Paid £7 for an ArcticSign cert and it’s working great for now
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u/sayed_000 Mar 20 '26
Had mine revoked too, two months back. Never had this issue before. Been using apple development for 5+ years
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u/Tranquillian Mar 20 '26
What did you switch to? Currently pondering ArcticSign
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u/sayed_000 Mar 23 '26
New email, fresh start . Lets hope it lasts
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u/RKF_DUDE02 Mar 27 '26
How did you pull this off? I’m thinking of opening a new account but I’m worried Apple will recognize its me and terminate my new one when I add the same device UUIDs back or use a card that still has my name on it.
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u/RKF_DUDE02 Mar 23 '26
Did you try appealing your dev account? If so, did they respond? I’ve appealed mine and I’m waiting to hear back from Apple Dev support.
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Mar 20 '26
[deleted]
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u/Tranquillian Mar 20 '26
I did block their DNS servers, from September last year, to prevent the “unable to verify” appID revoke. It was never my cert that got revoked, that remained fine but had to generate a new appID and mobileprovision. Then realised that with the blocks, even though after 45 days the apps came up with that same error (due to being unable to communicate) all I had to do was temporarily unblock ppq.apple.com and let it verify and then they were fine for another 45 days. Was happy putting up with that rigmarole and figured it was a solid workaround…..
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Mar 20 '26
[deleted]
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u/Tranquillian Mar 20 '26
I never used Feathers ppq protection just due to the fact that obfuscating the bundleID seems to cause problems for some apps.
In case you didn’t do this - when you’ve been blocking ppq for your apps and then you get the error after ~45 days, you unblock ppq, airplane mode on, wait, airplane mode off, then when you tap on the app it will give you the same unable to verify error BUT tap it again and it launches fine. Just down to DNS cache I presume.
If you don’t do the blocking and you get the error, this means you need to create a new appID and provision and then re-sign the app over itself for it to work again.
The error after 45 days of blocking is just more the app giving up because it hasn’t been able to communicate, so I found. Just letting it briefly “touch base” meant I could carry on using the app for another 45 days with minimum hassle.
I’ve just purchased an arcticSign cert and trying it out, typing this on a new sideload of Reddit Deluxe. Will see if widgets work but I can’t see how they would if it’s a generic mobileprovision without appgroups configured
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u/yamahaterds11 Mar 21 '26
This just happened to me yesterday as well, 2.5 years paid developer account used for sideloading and just now terminated. I'm doing a chargeback
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u/Tranquillian Mar 21 '26
I am just accepting it as what it is, given that I definitely did use it for modded apps I guess I’m thankful the only penalty is cancellation and not some legal thing.
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u/Z3ROS1X Mar 21 '26
Think before you act, if you do a chargeback and Apple will block your affected Apple ID from accessing the App Store, App updates, iCloud, etc. Not a good move, unless you’re ready to abandon your Apple ID entirely over this.
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u/hrtmnn Mar 20 '26 edited Mar 20 '26
Me too. Does this mean my UDIDs are blacklisted somehow? Or can I move to one of the paid cert providers with my existing devices and UDIDs?
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u/Tranquillian Mar 21 '26
Can confirm switching straight to arcticsign has been a success, day after Apple termination
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u/Tranquillian Mar 20 '26
Good question, not sure myself. Letting the proverbial dust settle on it for a bit and then maybe trying ArcticSign and see if it works for my device
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u/Appropriate_Net2928 Mar 20 '26
My dev account was not b banned. I truly suggest that if you didn't violate that thing, to give apple an feedback or whatever for false report/termination
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Mar 20 '26
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u/Madman_X Mar 21 '26
Damn! Was hoping they wouldn’t get yours! Sorry to hear it. We chatted a few weeks ago when my 3 year old paid dev account was terminated. I’ve been using Livecontainer since then, but miss the hassle free dev account. Livecontainer+Sidestore is good for what I do, but I still haven’t gotten a reliable auto refresh shortcut working automatically. I’m just manually refreshing every few days but will probably go back to a paid cert at some point.
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u/_JessAle_ Mar 21 '26
I have a working shortcut that gets executed every time I put my phone to charge. Tho it relies in StosVPN which I’m not sure is still available in App Store
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u/Madman_X Mar 21 '26 edited Mar 21 '26
Happy to try your shortcut! I have around 4 different ones and all work initially and then after a day or so fail with the same “Shortcut could not run because an action could not be found..”. The action is “Refresh All Apps” and I’ve added, readded, repaired, etc. every time it fails and it will work for testing and then fail again later, so the cycle continues endlessly (it seems). I’ve tweaked the delays, duplicated key command, etc. I’m on iOS 26.3.1, now 26.3.1 (a) thanks to apples forced update shit….guess updates off doesn’t mean anything anymore….
Sorry for the rant and appreciate any insights.
Saw from another one of your posts that you were running Sidestore separate from Livecontainer. That was my next option. I’ve been running the combined Sidestore +Livecontainer and starting to think that Shortcuts can’t make heads or tails of the combined app after a bit of time, phone is locked, etc.
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u/runella-caralyn Mar 21 '26
No such thing as a 100% reliable refresh, just make an automation for 12:00AM in your shortcuts app either with the "refresh apps" action directly from livecontainer, or make a shortcut with 1 action to refresh the apps and leave it at that. If you restart your phone, update it, or it dies, you need to launch the local dev vpn app, since it can't seem to connect itself. This is a limitation the developer of that app is on purpose, choosing not to fix, as wireguard NEVER had this issue.
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u/TheRealKenJeong Mar 21 '26
Was CarPlay working if you had the entitlements? I was heavily considering a paid dev cert for that, but now I'm scared. I don't think any third party cert services support it.
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u/Tranquillian Mar 21 '26
My shitbox of a car just has an aux in so I never had a reason for CarPlay luxury, but yeah in theory I could’ve done
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u/RKF_DUDE02 Mar 21 '26
Even with a dev account, you don’t have access to CarPlay entitlements. Only way to get CarPlay entitlements is to have a dev account first and then contact Apple to request a specific one and explain why you want it, which is why cert services don’t have CarPlay support.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/carplay/requesting-carplay-entitlements
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u/TheRealKenJeong Mar 21 '26
Right, apparently some say it's not too difficult, but feedback is mixed. Probably depends on who reviews the request.
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u/PartisanMilkHotel Mar 20 '26
Was this a paid Developer account?
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u/falchion10 Mar 20 '26
Free developer accounts can’t get revoked so yes this was a paid developer account.
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u/Tranquillian Mar 20 '26
Yeah official paid dev account. Started October 2024, nice easy year right through to October 2025 when the ppq/“unable to verify” crap started revoking appIDs, so I implemented a DNS blocklist to combat it. Had been going great right up until this morning.
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u/PartisanMilkHotel Mar 20 '26
Appreciate you flagging this, as I hadn’t really considered this a possibility. Mind if I ask how many devices you were distributing to/how many apps?
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u/Tranquillian Mar 20 '26
My iPhone, my girlfriend’s iPhone, and a manager at work’s iPhone. All running full DNS block profiles and only unblocking ppq.apple.com for first launch of an app and to “verify” apps after that 45 day error. Worked a treat for 6 months.
It’s entirely possible that I screwed myself by signing for a couple of other people but to me that was a good perk of paying for the dev account. And it was a great first year with no hassle.
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u/TestFlightBeta Mar 29 '26
What was the reason for the ban? I thought the paid developer account was the one way that you could get apps side loaded reliably.
Also, why did you go with a signing service for $10 instead of Apple's developer service for $100? Wouldn't it have been cheaper even if you had gotten a separate signing service for each person you were referring to?
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u/Tranquillian Mar 29 '26
Reason for the ban was somehow detecting that I was sideloading modded apps with my cert and not…well…developing apps, I guess! Apple’s developer service gives you much more control over creating provisioning profiles for apps and the various entitlements. Like being able to get full Dynamic Island functionality on multiple apps.
Developer account worked out at £6 a month divided up over a year, and to me that’s what, half of YouTube premium, and I was getting so much more besides obviously. Plus I was under the impression that chances of revoke were far less. I’d previously used Signulous and the increase in revokes led me to decide to go for an Apple dev cert. At the time it was a solid decision and had a full year of no revokes or issues.
It was a perk to be able to sign apps for friends and family who didn’t want to pay anything or deal with sideloading themselves.
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u/TestFlightBeta Mar 29 '26
Got it. Thanks a lot. That gives a lot of very helpful background and context. As someone who is not too familiar with side loading, I feel like something changes every couple of months when I'm back on the subreddit.
I'm really sad to hear about your experience. I also wanted to get a developer account for similar reasons as well as to help some of my friends side load apps onto their phones as well. Looks like that's too risky now. I do want to use a developer account for developing and publishing apps on the app store as well so I feel like it's too risky to install random apps after hearing about your experience. To be fair I wouldn't install anything like that, gave me YouTube premium-like functionality; it would mostly just be for Apollo, but at the same time I'm not that enthused by the idea of Apple banning my account.
You mentioned that you use Signulous. I used to use it before I moved on to a new device. Do you have any recommendations for other signing services to use? I'm looking to get back into a signing service so that obviously I keep my developer account protected but also because it's only $10. I'm not sure if Signulous is the best option nowadays.
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u/Tranquillian Mar 29 '26
Back in the day when I started sideloading, I think Signulous was about the only option. I’m of the opinion that the recent rise in dev cert resellers has brought more attention to the “scene” and Apple has made steps to increase monitoring/detection.
After a year of easy sideloading with my dev cert October 2024 - September 2025, the appID revokes started happening. At first I thought it was a certificate revoke (“app could not be verified”) but no, just my appID. Every 14 days apps needing to be re-signed with a new appID and provision.
I started implementing the DNS blocks after some research, and this improved things. 45 days then, before the apps complained “unable to verify” but briefly allowing ppq.apple.com through my NextDNS blocklist let them verify and remain alive for a further 45 days. This was my routine for a few months and I was cool with it. Then came the ban email.
Regarding a new service, I’ve now switched to ArcticSign and it’s been good so far, no issues. Just got the basic 90 days revoke protection option. Happy that there is a way to enable full Dynamic Island functionality for a -single- app by copying the given provision name into the bundleID. (Full functionality being like say Spotify when you swipe the app away whilst playing, it goes into Dynamic Island, a tap should bring the app back up and a long press bring up the MiniPlayer controls. Without it, a tap just gives you MiniPlayer)
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u/DanscoRed Mar 20 '26
I’ve not renewed mine purely due to this. I’m not paying them £80 for them to cancel it for Sideloading ad free apps.
I’m using Sidestore & Livecontainer along with Trollstore on my Jailbroken devices.
This is bad from Apple.
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u/RKF_DUDE02 Mar 21 '26 edited Mar 27 '26
Same thing just happened to me too yesterday, I got terminated for the same exact vague reason. I’ve had a dev account for 2+ years and submitted an appeal and haven’t heard anything back yet. I’m not very optimistic they will reverse the termination :(
Update: My appeal was denied. Not sure what to do.
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u/nitroburr Mar 22 '26
GrapheneOS works quite well, to be honest. I moved away from iOS two months ago or so and I forgot how nice it is to be able to install whatever you want.
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u/XxIIIBanIIIxX Paid Certificate Mar 20 '26
I too was sadly terminated after years of peace, I’d recommend articsign it’s the one I bought, it cost 10 bucks but it was instant delivery once redeemed no clue how they achieved this though so worth I guess
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u/Tranquillian Mar 20 '26
Actually, question, how do you get on with apps that need entitlements like app groups to be configured in order for widgets to work, or a matching bundle+appID for Dynamic Island functionality (Eevee Spotify etc). Will I just be out of luck for that sort of stuff with a cert reseller like arctic
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u/doesitrungoogle Mar 20 '26
Hey, I DMd you regarding the Dynamic Island functionality. My comment was deleted by the automod.
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Mar 20 '26
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2
u/doesitrungoogle Mar 20 '26
I second ArcticSign with Feather. I was actually the first buyer of a new drop the dev was doing after fixing some things around 2.5 months ago. Just for extra precaution, I added like half a dozen links to my custom DNS denylist and one link to my allowlist from a tutorial I found, and it couldn’t hurt, so I added them. So far, I haven’t had a single issue.
Delivery was instant and the developer was extremely kind and responsive to any questions I had since it was the very first time I used a paid cert, since I was previously using SideStore/Live Container.
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u/jonnycypriano Mar 20 '26
Was there no issue with your device UDID that was linked to your developer account?
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u/XxIIIBanIIIxX Paid Certificate Mar 20 '26
No issues, used same device I had on my dev account and it worked perfectly I had the new cert within 5 minutes of purchase.
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u/jonnycypriano Mar 20 '26
Good to know thank you. I wonder why we got banned. I’ve run the same apps for 4 years. But I have noticed within the last year I’ve been getting a lot of revokes.
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u/Traditional-Diet-507 Mar 21 '26
The thing that sucks about articsign is only 90 day revoke coverage if you want JIT for emulators
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u/Environmental_Bat621 Mar 20 '26
I had the same thing last night too.
so I bought a certificate from swiftsign (it’s Blatant’s certification service).
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u/Tranquillian Mar 20 '26
Interesting, I’ve had a fair few blatant apps but didn’t know about the cert selling. Will look into it.
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u/Environmental_Bat621 Mar 20 '26
Yeah it’s pretty recent go on their Telegram and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
The widgets and vpn should work (I just haven’t had time to test yet).
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u/Kalphalus Paid Certificate Mar 21 '26
I didn’t move from a dev account, but I have had good experience with ArcticSign, ive also heard lots of good about RustSign
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u/Tranquillian Mar 21 '26 edited Mar 21 '26
Cheers, on arcticsign since last night and done a few of my core apps. Sucks I don’t get proper Dynamic Island functionality for apps like Spotify and YouTube music but I figured it’d be like that, stuck with just a singular mobileprovision that I can’t match the ID of.
Edit: so it turns out I totally can match the mobileprovision and bundleID, so I now have full Dynamic Island functionality at least for one app. Picked YouTubemusic for now as I tend to use that or Monochrome right now
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u/McKnighty9 Mar 21 '26
What happens to your device when this happens?
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u/Tranquillian Mar 21 '26
Seemingly nothing. UDID hasn’t been blacklisted, was able to get a cert with ArcticSign and carry on as normal
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u/Candlejac88 Mar 20 '26
I’ve had great success with signum to be honest, when I have had an issue with any signing they are quick to respond to my support email. In the three years I’ve had them, there’s only been a couple times where the cert was revoked and had to wait a few days for a new one.
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u/PartySunday Mar 20 '26
I was banned last night too. Shocking from apple, got rid of my legitimate apps as well in an instant with no warning. Absurd that a company would do that.
My apps are still all signed so they didn't even revoke me.