Sideloading works until it doesn’t — and when it breaks, it usually breaks with the same handful of errors. «Refresh failed,» «something went wrong, refresh and try again,» «unable to sign in with your Apple account,» an app that installs but will not open. Here are the ones people hit most, what each one actually means, and how to fix it.
«Untrusted Developer» — the app installs but will not open
This means the certificate that signed the app is not trusted on your device yet. Fix it in Settings > General > VPN & Device Management: tap the developer profile (a free Apple ID shows under your email address) and choose Trust. Open the app again and it will launch.
«Unable to sign in with your Apple account»
The tool could not sign the app because Apple rejected the sign-in. The usual causes are two-factor authentication, or too many attempts in a short window. If 2FA is on, generate an app-specific password at account.apple.com and use that instead of your normal password. If you have been signing in repeatedly, wait an hour — Apple rate-limits sign-ins and will keep failing until the cooldown passes.
AltStore or SideStore «refresh failed»
The tool could not re-sign your apps before the 7-day certificate expired. For AltStore, make sure AltServer is running on a computer on the same Wi-Fi network — AltStore cannot refresh on its own. For SideStore, confirm the pairing file is still valid and the VPN it relies on (StikDebug or a local dev VPN) is switched on; if the pairing file broke, regenerate it and re-import. A refresh that fails once often works after the VPN is toggled off and on.
«Something went wrong. Refresh and try again later.»
Common on tweaked apps, this usually means the app’s signing lapsed or its backend hit a temporary snag. Re-sign or refresh the app first. If it keeps happening, reinstall the current IPA — an outdated build often breaks after the base app updates. If only one tweaked app is affected, check whether that tweak has shipped a compatibility update.
«Device not registered,» UDID errors, or stuck on processing
These mean your device is not active on the certificate yet. It is not a bug — it is Apple registering your device, which can take up to 24 to 72 hours the first time, and occasionally a longer cooldown if a certificate was revoked. Do not remove and re-add the device; that restarts the wait. Give it up to three days, then it installs normally.
Apps vanished or «could not verify app integrity»
If your sideloaded apps disappeared or refuse to open with a verification error, the certificate they were signed with was revoked. That is a separate issue with its own fix — see why sideloaded apps get revoked on iPhone.
The fix that skips most of these
Most of these errors come from the free-certificate setup: weekly re-signing, VPN pairing files, sign-in throttling, and shared certificates that get revoked. Managed signing removes that whole class of problems — on builds.io, apps are signed long-term and re-signed for you, with no weekly refresh, no VPN, and no computer. Fewer moving parts, fewer error screens.
