Non-technical explanation on how to install an iOS project

How Do You Send A Xcode App To An iPhone?

In this post, you’ll learn how you can install a Xcode project onto an iPhone.

This post is based on a question that I answered on Quora. If you are no developer, and ever came across source code of an iOS project — perhaps on GitHub or some other website — you might have wondered how those get from source code onto an actual device. In this post, I’ll explain how to get any iOS source code (aka a “Xcode project”) onto an iPhone.

In order to get an app onto an iPhone, you will need:

• an Apple Developer Program account
• Xcode installed on a Mac computer with MacOS
• initially, a cable connecting the iPhone to the iPhone OR TestFlight

Xcode is an application on MacOS that developers use — also known as an Integrated Developer Environment, IDE in short — to code, create, compile and ship their apps.

There are also two online environments, namely:

• The Developer Portal: an online portal for setting up certificates, developer devices, profiles, etc. This is all stuff that lets you build an app on your Mac, so it can be distributed
• iTunes Connect Portal: this is the online portal that developers use to set up App Store apps (with their descriptions, screenshots…