Before Apple unified its certificate types, an iOS team needed an iOS Distribution certificate to sign builds for iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and Apple Watch. A Mac team needed a separate Mac App Distribution certificate. Modern Apple Developer accounts issue a single Apple Distribution certificate that works across all of those platforms, and the legacy iOS Distribution type is no longer offered for new certificates.
You will still see this name
- Existing provisioning profiles created before the unification still reference an iOS Distribution certificate.
- Older fastlane match repos and CI scripts often hard-code the type name `appstore` or `iOS Distribution`.
- Some build settings and entitlement docs in older Apple PDFs and WWDC slides still use the old terminology.
What to do if you have one
Existing iOS Distribution certificates keep working until they expire. When you rotate one, Apple will issue an Apple Distribution certificate instead. Any provisioning profile that referenced the old type can be regenerated against the new one and your build settings do not need to change.