winapp-signing

When to use

Use this skill when:

• Generating a development certificate for local MSIX signing and testing
• Installing (trusting) a certificate on a machine so MSIX packages can be installed
• Signing an MSIX package or executable for distribution

Prerequisites

• winapp CLI installed
• Administrator access required for cert install (trusting certificates on the machine)

Key concepts

Publisher matching: The publisher in your certificate must exactly match the Publisher attribute in Package.appxmanifest. Any valid X.500 distinguished name is supported (e.g., CN=MyCompany or OU=Team, O=Corp, C=US). Use --manifest when generating to auto-match.

Dev vs. production certs: winapp cert generate creates self-signed certificates for local testing only. For production distribution (Microsoft Store or enterprise), obtain a certificate from a trusted Certificate Authority.

Default password: Generated certificates use password as the default PFX password. Override with --password.