The selected ios device is not supported for creating an archive

Question

I'm trying to setup new MacBook as a build server remotely for xamarin projects. It is in my office and I connect there with rdp from Windows 10 from home.

On MacBook: installed Xcode, Apple Developer Tools, Transporter. On windows: connected to mac, entered AppleID in visual Studio, enabled Automatic Provisioning. Then I build my Xamarin.Forms ios project in "AppStore" configuration and it's ok. Then I click "Archive" on that project and get error message from Visual Studio Archive Manager:

Selected device doesn't support archiving.
The selected ios device is not supported for creating an archive.
Please select a remote device from the drop-down menu before archiving.

Do I have to have iPhone to build my app? Where - in MacBook location or at home?

Archiving of a new default project works in Xcode (the active scheme is set to "Any iOS device (arm64)"). The error is in visual studio.

Visual Studio 2019 - (16.11.2) XCode 12.5.1

Answer 1

The solution in 2022 is to choose "Remote Device" from the "Debug" dropdown:

This is hinted at in the question, but that error message no longer explains what to do (!?!)

Answer 2

It looks like Microsoft have finally released a fix for this in 16.11.3: The release notes are here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/releases/2019/release-notes#16.11.3

Answer 3

There is a new version that fixes this

Answer 4

It seems that remote device option does not show in drop menu in VS 16.11 .

Check the similar cases : here and here .

Try to downgrade Visual studio to 16.10.x to see if problem persists.

You can download the older version from this link .

Answer 5

You don't need a physical device to archive. Just click the bar on the top-left of your screen, then select the Any iOS Device option. On older versions of Xcode, I think it was called Generic iOS Device. After this, hit Product -> Archive again.