Is there a way to actually delete devices from Apple Developer Portal?

Question

Our company has 11 different apps on AppStore, with different teams developing each app, we have a lot of test devices, and our "Device list" in developer.apple.com/account is completely full. We received a bunch of iPhone 8 and 8 Plus on their release, and a couple of iPhone X on its release, but none of them can be added to our provisioning profiles because our device list is full.

We know that the device list gets updated every year, at the start of our "developer year" when paying the fee. Sadly, in previous years, we have not been deleting unused devices, so we have a lot of devices registered from people who no longer work there, devices we no longer support, and employees' older phones. We can mark them as "inactive", which I guess will mean they get automatically removed when the new year starts..

The next time our membership is renewed is too far into the future. We can't release apps without testing them on these new devices.

I understand the reasoning behind allowing only 100 devices a year, disabling the opportunity to release apps to anyone anytime, but it doesn't really work for us. There should be a way to apply for an extended list of devices.. Like, 150 would do..

Is there anything I've misunderstood, or is this actually the case? It is impossible for us to add our new devices until the next renewal, even if that's in next August?

Answer 1

Please contact Apple tech support as a technical incident filed from your apple account by Agent. The situation to be explained to apple may allow them to clear all the devices for you and re-register them in middle of the year. If they agree shouldn't be a problem to do in mid year time.

Note there are 2 free tech-incidents given for your account per year so use it wisely.

https://developer.apple.com/support/technical/

Answer 2

As for the initial question, there is nothing you can do to delete devices from an account in the middle of the account year. But I would take the opportunity now to delete old devices so that you don't forget and end up in the same spot next year.

I would have all developers on the team create individual developer accounts. Then from the original company account, add the new developer accounts as team member roles. Designate one of those accounts for the new CI/CD process until you can clean up the devices in the main account. Next year at renewal, clean up the devices just to company devices used for testing, and update your CI pipeline to use the company account again. All developers should add their devices to their own personal developer accounts.

I have heard rumors that some companies have contacted Apple about a temporary increase to the device limit. You could try contacting them to see if they could grant you a temporary bump. However, I would make sure you do the other things mentioned above to ensure that you don't run into the problem again down the road.