Farmero drives a phone through a small app called the runner. iOS only runs developer-signed apps, so the runner has to be installed from Xcode once per phone.

The mistake to avoid

Install the runner with Product → Test (⌘U). Never the ▶ Run button (⌘R).

⌘R installs an empty placeholder app. It looks like it worked — the app is on the phone, Xcode says success — and then every warm-up fails to connect, with nothing on screen saying why. If your runs are failing immediately after setup, this is almost always it. Reinstall with ⌘U.

Two ways to sign it

A free Apple ID. Costs nothing. The signature expires after 7 days, so you re-run ⌘U weekly. Fine for trying Farmero out.

A paid Apple Developer account ($99/year). The signature lasts a year. Worth it the moment you have more than one phone.

Either way it is your Apple account, never ours. Farmero never asks for Apple credentials and cannot see them.

Steps

Farmero shows you the runner project — open it in Xcode
Select your team under Signing & Capabilities
Pick the connected iPhone as the destination
Product → Test (⌘U)
On the phone: Settings → General → VPN & Device Management → your developer profile → Trust

Step 5 is easy to skip and produces a confusing failure: iOS silently refuses to launch an untrusted developer app, so the runner never starts and the Mac reports a timeout rather than a permissions problem.

Checking it worked

Farmero's Phones tab shows the runner as installed and reachable. If it says installed but unreachable, the profile is untrusted — do step 5.