Distributing an IPA over the air with dropbox — iOS 10 in five minutes

You don’t have an SSL certificate but you need to deliver an enterprise app? You can easily doing it using Dropbox in few clicks.

1. Create a folder on your mac and define Dropbox to sync the folder to the Dropbox cloud.
2. In this folder, put the install.html, .plist and .ipa files.
3. Right click on the ipa file and choose Share Dropbox link from the context menu. (It will place something like ‘https://www.dropbox.com/s/xxxyyyzzz1982/your_app.ipa’ in the clipboard.)
4. Open the manifest.plist file in a text editor and paste the link to the .ipa file in the string that includes an https address for an ipa file.

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <!-- array of downloads. -->
  <key>items</key>
  <array>
   <dict>
    <!-- an array of assets to download -->
     <key>assets</key>
      <array>
       <!-- software-package: the ipa to install. -->
        <dict>
         <!-- required. the asset kind. -->
          <key>kind</key>
          <string>software-package</string>
          <!-- required. the URL of the file to download. -->
          <key>url</key>
       <string>https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/xxxyyyzzz/your_app.ipa</string>          
        </dict>
        <!-- display-image: the icon to display during download.-->
        <dict>
         <key>kind</key>
         <string>display-image</string>
         <key>url</key>
         <string>http://www.yourwebsite.com/inhouse/icon.png</string>
        </dict>
        <!-- full-size-image: the large 512x512 icon used by iTunes. -->
        <dict>
         <key>kind</key>
         <string>full-size-image</string>
         <key>needs-shine</key>
         <true/>
         <key>url</key><string>http://www.yourwebsite.com/inhouse/iTunesArtwork.png</string>
        </dict>
      </array><key>metadata</key>
      <dict>
       <!-- required -->
       <key>bundle-identifier</key>
       <string>com.yourwebsite.app</string>
       <!-- optional (software only) -->
       <key>bundle-version</key>
       <string>1.0</string>
       <!-- required. the download kind. -->
       <key>kind</key>
       <string>software</string>
       <!-- optional. displayed during download; typically company name -->
       <key>subtitle</key>
       <string>Your App Name</string>
       <!-- required. the title to display during the download. -->
       <key>title</key>
       <string>Your App Name</string>
      </dict>
    </dict>
  </array>
</dict>
</plist>

Now what we need is a html page with an action to start the .ipa dowload

<div class="section hero">
    <div class="container">
      <div class="row">
        <div class="one-half column">
          <h5 class="">Enterprise In-House App distribution.</h6>
          <a class="button button-primary" href="itms-services://?action=download-manifest&url=https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/xxxyyyzzz/manifest.plist">Download Your App</a>
        </div>
      </div>
    </div>
  </div>

There you are! Now using an iOS device and Safari you’ll be able to install your enterprise app.