Default Mail App entitlement missing Ad Hoc support

Hi Apple DTS and community,

My developer account's app has been granted the Default Mail App managed capability (com.apple.developer.mail-client). The capability works for Development and App Store Connect distribution, but it is not enabled for Ad Hoc distribution.

This prevents us from using our Xcode Cloud “Archive & TestFlight” workflow:

  • The archive succeeds.
  • Development and App Store Connect exports succeed.
  • Xcode Cloud then automatically attempts an Ad Hoc export.
  • The Ad Hoc export fails, causing the entire archive action to fail and the TestFlight post-action to be skipped.

The export log reports:

Entitlement com.apple.developer.mail-client not found and could not be included in profile. This likely is not a valid entitlement and should be removed from your entitlements file.

We have reproduced this in two consecutive Xcode Cloud runs. We also confirmed that:

  • The App ID has the Default Mail App capability enabled.
  • The entitlement is present and correctly spelled in the app’s entitlements file.
  • The App ID’s provisioning support lists Development and App Store Connect, but not Ad Hoc.
  • Our Xcode Cloud workflow does not expose an option to disable the automatically attempted Ad Hoc export.

This appears to match these previous reports:

We also opened an Apple Developer Support case (102945477410). Developer Support directed us to the forums and indicated that this issue would need to be handled by DTS engineers.

I can provide our Team ID, Developer Support case number, Xcode Cloud run identifiers, and any other account details privately if needed.

Thank you!