Daily Tip: How to get your UDID number from System Profiler on Mac

Forget to add your UDID (universal device identifier) to the iOS Developer Portal before loading up iOS 5 beta and wondering how to find it so your iPhone or iPad will activate? It happens. Your iPhone gets swapped out by the Apple Store due to a hardware issue or you get an iPad 2 and forget to add it before you install the new software. iTunes won't help you until the device is activated. Usually you can just grab it from Xcode but if you don't have Xcode handy, you can also get it from System Profiler. We'll show you how, after the break!

To get your UDID:

1. Launch System Profiler (it's in the Utilities Folder or just hit Spotlight and start typing)
2. Under Hardware in the sidebar, go down to USB
3. In the top right pane, go to USB High Speed Bus. If you have a MacBook or iMac, the first one is usually the iSight/FaceTime camera, so open the second to find your iPhone or iPad
4. Click on your device
5. In the bottom pane, look for the serial number. That's the UDID.
6. Copy and paste it
7. Head back to developer.apple.com and add it to your authorized device list

That's it, from crisis to cool in just a few clicks.

If you have any other developer tips, leave them in the comments!

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