App installation failed: Could not write to the device

Question

In Xcode 6.3, I got this error when trying to run an iOS project written in Swift on a real device.

App installation failed

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Answer 1

I had a symlink in my project to a file outside of the project. When I deleted this symlink the install worked fine.

Answer 2

Maybe it can be due to the following error App installation failed. No code signature found. In my case after a project clean the description of the error switched to "No code signature found".

Answer 3

This looks like another time waster courtesy of Apple's amazingly high class development team. On iOS11 Xcode9 (pick your beta, any one works) this will happen randomly. Appears to be more frequent if you dare to switch apps while compiling. Just build again and stare at xcode - it'll work the second time without fail in my experience.

Answer 4

If you are using a free developer account you may need to uninstall some other apps you have signed.

Answer 5

This error has many potential root causes, as can be seen by the large variety of suggested answers. The best approach to troubleshooting app installation issues like this one is usually to inspect the console of the iOS device itself, as that'll often provide much more specific error messages. In Xcode open the 'Devices and Simulators' window and take a peek at the logs of the device where your app is being installed.

In my case, the "Could not write to the device" error was being caused by this:

Feb 27 10:54:58 iPhone-7-110 installd(MobileSystemServices)[46] : 0x16f92f000 -[MIBundle _validateWithError:]: 38: Failed to load Info.plist from bundle at path /private/var/installd/Library/Caches/com.apple.mobile.installd.staging/temp.ebmR6U/extracted/SampleApp.app/Frameworks/SomeFramework.framework

Which clearly hints at what's actually going on. I had forgotten to set an Info.plist file for my dynamic framework target (used by the app).

Answer 6

My problem was I had initially installed the app using a different set of developer credentials on the device. Deleting the app from the device fixed it.