Apple Distribution signature fails its designated requirement — possible Unicode normalization issue

However, verification reports:

What do you mean by “verification”? Clicking the Validate App button in the Xcode organiser?

I suspect a Unicode-normalization mismatch

You are right to suspect that, but I want to run you through some debugging steps before I send you down that path.

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—
Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

Thanks for responding.

By “verification,” I mean the following Terminal command run against Runner.app extracted from the App Store IPA:

codesign –verify –deep –strict –verbose=4 “/path/to/Runner.app”

It reports:

Runner.app: valid on disk Runner.app: does not satisfy its designated Requirement

I also inspected the signature and designated requirement using:

codesign -dv –verbose=4 “/path/to/Runner.app” codesign -d -r- “/path/to/Runner.app”

The app shows an Apple Distribution authority and the correct TeamIdentifier. Xcode’s Validate App and App Store Connect upload both fail with error 90035 for Runner, App.framework, and Flutter.framework.

I’m happy to follow your debugging steps. Please let me know which outputs or diagnostic files you need. I will sanitize personal and project identifiers before posting them publicly.

Well, that’s exciting.

First up, let’s get Flutter out of the mix. Try this:

1. Use Xcode to create a new test project, giving it the same bundle ID as your real app.
2. Do a Product > Archive.
3. In the Xcode organiser, export the .ipa from that archive.
4. Re-run your codesign test.

Does it have the same problem?

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

I am seeing what appears to be the same issue with Xcode 26.6, but with the character “à” in our organization's name.

App Store Connect rejects the upload with:

ITMS-90035 – Invalid Signature Code failed to satisfy specified code requirement(s).

I was also able to reproduce the problem locally by exporting the application using:

Organizer → Distribute App → Release Testing

and then verifying the exported application with codesign.

The result is:

MyApp.app: valid on disk MyApp.app: does not satisfy its designated Requirement

After investigating, I found the same type of Unicode normalization mismatch described in this thread.

In the actual Apple Distribution certificate, “à” is stored in precomposed form:

à → c3 a0

while the designated requirement generated during distribution contains the visually identical “à” in decomposed form:

a + combining grave accent → 61 cc 80

So the two values look identical but are represented differently internally, causing the application not to satisfy its own designated requirement.

I would also like to emphasize that in our case “Sàrl” is not simply part of a company name that we can change to work around the problem.

Sàrl (Société à responsabilité limitée) is an official legal form for companies in Switzerland, equivalent to forms such as LLC or Ltd in other countries. The Swiss government's SME portal states that there are more than 92,000 Sàrl companies in Switzerland and that the legal-form designation must be included in the company name:

https://www.kmu.admin.ch/fr/forme-juridique-societe-a-responsabilite-limitee-sarl

Our organization is officially registered as a Sàrl, so removing or replacing the “à” is not a viable workaround.

This also means that the issue potentially affects a large number of Swiss companies using Apple's distribution tools.

Previous versions of our application were successfully distributed under the same registered organization name using older Apple/Xcode signing toolchains.

I am adding this information mainly to confirm that the issue is reproducible with another accented character and another organization, and that in the Swiss case the affected text is part of a standard legal company designation rather than an unusual organization name.

We are experiencing the same issue, but in our case it appears to be related to our company name, which contains the character “à”.

The certificate is rejected for the same reason:

Certificate: Sàrl → à = c3 a0

Xcode rule: Sàrl → a + combining accent = 61 cc 80

We are not using Flutter, so I do not believe this issue is Flutter-related.

I performed the clean-project test suggested above.

I created a completely new native Swift iOS project in Xcode 26.6, in a separate directory, with a new unrelated bundle identifier. It contains no Flutter, Kotlin Multiplatform, third-party frameworks, or code from our existing application.

After:

Product → Archive → Distribute App → Release Testing

the exported IPA produces exactly the same result:

SigningTest.app: valid on disk SigningTest.app: does not satisfy its designated Requirement

Inspecting the designated requirement again shows the organization's à in decomposed form:

61 cc 80

while the actual Apple Distribution certificate contains the same visually identical à in precomposed form:

c3 a0

I have also reproduced the same behavior using Xcode 26.0.1, 26.1 and 26.6.

This therefore appears independent of our application, framework, bundle identifier, or project configuration. A brand-new Xcode-generated Swift application signed by the same team reproduces the issue.

Hopefully this minimal reproduction helps isolate the issue.

Hmmm, there are now three different folks on this thread. That makes it hard to respond to any one of your specifically, so I’m going to post a generic reply.

If the test that I described earlier reveals a problem, my advice is:

1. File a bug describing the overall issue you’re hitting and the specific test your ran, and then attach the .ipa that you generated as part of that test.
2. Post the bug number here, just for the record.
3. Contact Apple > Developer > Contact Us and ask them to rename you team to remove the non-ASCII characters, being sure to reference the bug from step 1 as justification.

Sadly, this is not the only situation where ‘weird’ character cause problems for code signing:

• This thread describes an issue where double quotes in the team name cause similar issues.
• This reply explains how a non-ASCII character in the name of a file within the bundle can cause problems.

Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

I have filed the requested bug report with the minimal reproducing Swift IPA attached.

Feedback ID: FB24633162