Remove Provisioning Profiles from an iPhone to Stop the Expiration Alert
Provisioning profiles are typically installed onto iPhones and iPads for development and testing purposes, but non developers may wind up with them on their iOS devices too, whether from testing an app or installing something like GBA4iOS from the web.
For non-developers, this usually goes unnoticed until they get one of the “Provisioning Profile Expiration” alerts on their device, informing them that a profile will expire in however many days.
As many users have discovered, simply deleting the related app does not remove the provisioning profile, which is often why they see the expiration alert. So, here is how you can remove the profiles from any iOS device.
Note: You will not see a “Profiles” option in Settings if the device does not have a provisioning profile installed. Devices with multiple profiles installed will find all of them here.
How to Remove Provisioning Profiles Directly from iOS
- Open Settings and head to “General”
- Scroll all the way to the bottom and choose “Profiles”
- Select the provisioning profile you want to remove
- Tap the out of place* looking “Remove” button, then confirm the removal of the profile
(* The “Remove” button looks weird because it uses the graphic from iOS 6 and prior, even on iOS 7 and newer.)
Generally, removing the profile directly from the device is thee easiest way to go, but if there’s trouble you can turn to Xcode from the Devices list, a third party tool called Cupertino, or the iPhone Configuration Utility, with the latter being the easier option for those who don’t have Xcode.
Removing Provisioning Profiles with iPhone Configuration Utility
- Download iPhone Configuration Utility if you don’t have it yet
- Attach the device to the Mac or PC and launch the app
- Select the device in the Configuration Utility app, then choose the “Provisioning Profile” tab
- Locate the profile to delete, then choose the “Remove” option
Once the profile is gone from the iOS device, the alert message for that specific provisioning profile shouldn’t appear again.
Hi,
Maybe a new update for the newest iOS?
On 9.2 the Profile option is not available anymore.
How can I still see that expiration date?
Thanks,
Claudia
QA iOS@ Gameloft
THANK YOU SO SO MUCH FOR EXPLAINING HOW TO DELETE IT (provisioning profile off my iPhone!!) Now my movie app works again, yeay!! X
Thank you so much. I had to, some months ago, beg someone at Amazon to find me a version of their music cloud player that would work on my Ipad 1. And they did – but I had to go to this special place and install it via the pc first. Anyway – been getting warnings about this expiration of provisioning profile and I thought I had lucked out. I could not find anything (probably because I’m not an app developer) that I could understand, enough, to help me. It all looked so hellishly complex. Then I came across the above instructions that are clear, straight forward, not alarming at all, and explain something about the provisioning profiles that my lay brain can understand. So – as I cannot give the author (of the above) a great big cuddle… Just – thank you so very much!