Create Push Notification Certificate

In this article we describe how you can create a Push Notification certificate to send push notifications to iOS devices.

You will need to login in the Apple Developer Portal with your Apple Id and access to Certificates, IDs & Profiles

What you have to send us

After doing all the steps, remember that you have to send us 

  • the Push Notifications certificate downloaded from the Developer Portal
  • the Private Key associated to that certificate, which you will have exported from the Keychain Access application
  • the password associated to the Private Key, which you set when exporting the Private Key

Steps

1. Create the Push Notification certificate from the Developer Portal

Go to Certificates and click on Add a new certificate

Select Apple Push Notification service SSL (Sandbox & Production)

In the next screen, select the App Id of your application

After selecting the App Id, the form will ask you to create a Certificate Signing Request

As you will have to provide us the Private Key, you have to create always a new Private Key, not reuse any existing Private Key you already have.

We are going to create the Certificate Signing Request in your Mac computer

Open the app Keychain Access, located in Applications -> Utilities

To generate a Certificate Signing Request, you have to click in the top menu, in Keychain Access -> Certificate Assistant -> Request a Certificate from a Certificate Authority


In the assistant, enter your Email Address and the name of your company and select Saved to Disk

After completing the assistant, the Certificate Signing Request will be saved in your computer.

Now you have to upload it in the form to generate the Push Notification certificate in the Developer Portal

Your Push Notification is ready, download it to your computer

2. Export the Private Key from the Keychain Access application

The last step is to export the Private Key from the Keychain Access application

Select Keys in the Keychain Access application and locate the Private Key you created before. If you can not find it, filter by your company name

Now, you have to export the Private Key. 

The Private Key will be exported in p12 format

When exporting the Private Key, you will have to enter a password, which we will need to read the Private Key.

You can enter as password the App Id of your app or any other password, you will have to send us the password you have used

3. Send us the Push Notification certificate

You have to send us all these items

  • The Push Notification certificate downloaded from the Developer Portal
  • The Private Key associated to the certificate, which you exported from the Keychain Access application
  • The password you set to the Private Key when it was exported