Generate XCode Project doesnt do anything

[ViceVersa]

I just moved my project over from my windows pc to my mac. I already made the provisioning profile, bundlie id, certificate, etc. Im trying to get it on testflight but i need to get it open in Xcode to do that. when i right click the uproject file in Finder and choose Generate XCode Project, nothing happens… how do i fix this?

[Antidamage (Addie)]

That’s not the workflow I use.

1. Sync project to Mac
2. Go to developer.apple.com and create all of the certificates and provisioning profiles, add your devices, etc. Create both development and distribution profiles.
3. Go to XCode preferences->accounts and log in to your developer account. Click “Download manual profiles”.
4. Go to iTunes Connect and create your application using your Bundle ID
5. Load UE and select the distribution certs for signing. Set your app to “shipping” and “distribution”. Explicitly set your bundle ID (com.mygame.whatever). Build it.
6. Load up the Application Loader program on your Mac (maybe via XCode) and upload your .ipa file.

Once you’ve uploaded it to Testflight, it’ll go through a review process the first time. At this point you can add individual testers (get them to make an iTunes Connect account) or you can create external test groups. External test groups require ANOTHER round of review the first time and it takes longer, but it’s nice in that you can choose to release builds to them or not even if they’re uploaded to Testflight.

At no point do you need to do anything else in XCode. You don’t even need your project open.

The main thing I use XCode for besides downloading the certs is to deploy already-built dev builds to the device, since the launch button doesn’t deploy everything.

[Saltylike]

I facing the same issue, i’m working in 2 projects and the contextual menu option fails on both (same engine version), but for the first one i able to generate the xcode project running the GenerateProjectFiles.sh command, sadly it does not work in my second project. I tried to fix this issue since few months without any luck.

In case it help you, open terminal and run:

sh "/{PATH_TO_ENGINE}/unrealEngine-4.21.2-release/engine/build/batchfiles/Mac/GenerateProjectFiles.sh" -project="/{PATH_TO_PROJECT}/{UPROJECT_FILENAME}.uproject" -game

[ViceVersa]

@ARCoded

I facing the same issue, i’m working in 2 projects and the contextual menu option fails on both (same engine version), but for the first one i able to generate the xcode project running the GenerateProjectFiles.sh command, sadly it does not work in my second project. I tried to fix this issue since few months without any luck.

In case it help you, open terminal and run:

sh “/{PATH_TO_ENGINE}/unrealEngine-4.21.2-release/engine/build/batchfiles/Mac/GenerateProjectFiles.sh” -project=“/{PATH_TO_PROJECT}/{UPROJECT_FILENAME}.uproject” -game

I followed the stemps from Antidamage above and it worked.

[Gerigory]

@ARCoded

I facing the same issue, i’m working in 2 projects and the contextual menu option fails on both (same engine version), but for the first one i able to generate the xcode project running the GenerateProjectFiles.sh command, sadly it does not work in my second project. I tried to fix this issue since few months without any luck.

In case it help you, open terminal and run:

sh “/{PATH_TO_ENGINE}/unrealEngine-4.21.2-release/engine/build/batchfiles/Mac/GenerateProjectFiles.sh” -project=“/{PATH_TO_PROJECT}/{UPROJECT_FILENAME}.uproject” -game

cmd works great, thx a lot

[jdgfkf]

Hi, I have a similar issue here, but the terminal command does not work, it always tells me that :

“Unable to find project file based on argument” and the file path I wrote.

Now I tried to copy the project elsewhere, to be sure I did nothing wrong I copy the path by ctrl alt click on it to copy the project file path but nothing changes. If I tried to cd + the path copied, it works.

If I try to directly generate xcode on the project files it just opens a terminal windows and does nothing else.

[Automaticow]

This does not seem to work on UE5.1. It creates a xcode-project, but it only contains the editor (Eg. “UE5”) project, not the game itself

I have been trying to dig into this, but with no luck.

[dukkyofficial]

Any Solutions for this? on 5.1, It still just brings the default project into XCode

[arkadiuszrataj]

Try to install the latest QFE, that solves some issues with 5.1 on Mac. I had a similar problem - couldn’t generate Xcode project - and it resolved my issue.

Current Available Quick-Fix Solutions

Since the launch of Unreal Engine, we have been working as quickly as possible to resolve important issues as they have been reported to us. Once an important fix has been made, we sometimes respond directly to the affected users by providing a QFE (“Quick Fix Engineering”) which we share here on the forums. These QFEs eventually get rolled into the hotfixes and major version release updates that we provide for all, but until those updates we want to make sure that they are available to the sel…

[Asymmetric]

This worked fine for me with 5.2! Thank you!

[kolja_k1 (kolja_k)]

With an existing project, the shell command didn’t work for me at first (complained about platform not being set up correctly). So I created a new project from the 1st person template on my Mac, to see if that would build (it did). Did an iOS build, too.

Then I ran the shell command again on my existing project, and it worked. (UE 5.1.1)

[coolnames]

My issues came from copying projects from my Windows workstation over to my Mac Studio (M2 chip if that matters).

As others have said, right clicking on the *.uproject file → Services → Generate Xcode Project did not seem to do anything.

I used a combination of advice from earlier posts to get a *.xcodeproj file for my project:

I opened Terminal and used the cd command to navigate to the folder that had the GenerateProjectFiles.sh file. For me, that was this directory:
//Users/Shared/Epic\ Games/UE_5.2/Engine/Build/BatchFiles/Mac/

In Terminal, I entered the following command:
sh GenerateProjectFiles.sh -project=“//Users/coolnames/Desktop/TestProject/TestProject.uproject” -game

As long as no errors occur when running the sh, your Xcode project files should have been generated.

Now, as others have said, the *.xcworkspace file in the project directory only had the UE5 engine present and not the project files when opening in Xcode.

But, if you navigate from your project folder to /Intermediate/ProjectFilesIOS/
you will find your *.xcodeproj file.

I was able to open that file into Xcode and build/sign my project.

Good luck!

[chiltonwebb]

As this is the first post that shows up on a Google search for this topic, I wanted to update this with the latest info. I did not see a link to the info on Epic’s site and ChatGPT etc. were completely useless.

The trick is to use an engine you actually have, and to either escape the spaces or put the whole path in quotes.

So here’s what worked for me:

sh “/Users/Shared/Epic Games/UE_5.3/Engine/Build/BatchFiles/Mac/GenerateProjectFiles.sh” /Users/chilton/Documents/Unreal\ Projects/yourproject/yourproject.uproject

-Chilton

[VMukesh]

Thanks, this worked for ue5.3 project

[dBugSlayer]

Not only that. But you need to pass the full project path. The script currently breaks otherwise.

% pwd
~/GameProject

% /Users/Shared/Epic\ Games/UE_5.4/Engine/Build/BatchFiles/Mac/GenerateProjectFiles.sh GameProject.uproject

Setting up Unreal Engine project files...

Setting up bundled DotNet SDK
/Users/Shared/Epic Games/UE_5.4/Engine/Build/BatchFiles/Mac/../../../Binaries/ThirdParty/DotNet/6.0.302/mac-arm64
Log file: ~/Library/Application Support/Epic/UnrealBuildTool/Log_GPF.txt
Total execution time: 0.37 seconds
Unhandled exception: System.Exception: Unable to find project file based on argument yourproject.uproject
   at UnrealBuildTool.GenerateProjectFilesMode.TryParseProjectFileArgument(CommandLineArguments Arguments, ILogger Logger, FileReference& ProjectFile) in /Users/build/Build/++UE5/Sync/Engine/Saved/CsTools/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/Modes/GenerateProjectFilesMode.cs:line 325
   at UnrealBuildTool.GenerateProjectFilesMode.ExecuteAsync(CommandLineArguments Arguments, ILogger Logger) in /Users/build/Build/++UE5/Sync/Engine/Saved/CsTools/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/Modes/GenerateProjectFilesMode.cs:line 82
   at UnrealBuildTool.UnrealBuildTool.Main(String[] ArgumentsArray) in /Users/build/Build/++UE5/Sync/Engine/Saved/CsTools/Engine/Source/Programs/UnrealBuildTool/UnrealBuildTool.cs:line 660

% pwd
~/GameProject

% /Users/Shared/Epic\ Games/UE_5.4/Engine/Build/BatchFiles/Mac/GenerateProjectFiles.sh ~/Dev/GameProject/GameProject.uproject

Setting up Unreal Engine project files...

... <clipped output to keep it short>

Writing project files... 100%

Generating QueryTargets data for editor...
Total execution time: 8.83 seconds