How to install the digital certificate on your Mac and your iPhone

The digital certificate is an element that is going to become more and more essential for our day to day, with it we can authenticate ourselves on many platforms, interact with the public administration and much more without having to go in person to any of these organizations. With the arrival of applications that replace our documentation, it becomes more necessary than ever to be prepared for this type of software element. We want to show you with this little tutorial how you can easily install your digital certificate on both your Mac and your iPhone so that you can use it whenever and wherever you want. Stay tuned because it will make things much easier for you.

How to install digital certificate on Mac

Our Macs, with their macOS operating system, usually pose quite a few challenges when interacting with the Public Administration due to their low popularity with this type of systems, however, do not worry because everything has a solution. The first thing we are going to do is go to the FNMT website to proceed to request our digital certificate through software, whether we need the certificate of a natural person or if we want to obtain a digital certificate of representation for a legal person (companies, associations, foundations ... etc).

For this we go to ESTA Authorization Web address. Once inside, we will click on the option "Request Certificate". Here we find the first stumbling block, it tells us that our browser is not supported, Safari is not compatible to download the digital certificate, but do not worry, because we have a solution, we simply must install version 68 of Mozilla Firefox that we can obtain in THIS LINK. Once we have downloaded it, we simply proceed to install and run it easily, and now we are going to configure it so that it allows us to carry out the installation of the digital certificate. To configure Mozilla Firefox 68 for Mac and make it compatible with the request and download of the digital certificate we simply must download the following root certificate (DOWNLOAD)

Once downloaded, we must check the three boxes giving it full access to our system. To verify that we have installed it effectively we must follow the following path in Firefox: Menu> Options> Advanced> Certificates tab> View certificates button. There we must make sure that the Root CA Certificate FNMT-RCM is correctly installed. We already have Mozilla Firefox ready to request and download our digital certificate, now we just have to open the application and access the application again (LINK).

We are already on the application website, now we simply have to fill in the boxes that appear below: DNI or NIE number, first surname, email and password length (here we always choose high grade). The first important detail is that we must make sure that later we will be able to download the certificate from the same computer and the same browser from which we have made the request, otherwise it will give us an error and we will not be able to install it, that is why it is one of the most relevant details throughout the procedure.

When we have made the request we will receive an email with an "application code" that we must save, and the next step is to prove our identity. For this, it will be enough to go to any Social Security office, the Tax Agency (by appointment in this link) or to the authorized offices of our City Council with our ID and the email request code. There an official will prove our identity and enable us to download the digital certificate so that we can access the last step, the simplest of all. You can use the office location (link) to know where you can go to prove your identity.

And now we proceed to the last step and the simplest of all, we are going to click on «Download Certificate«, a screen will open where we will enter our DNI / NIE, our first surname and the request code that they previously sent us by email. We also click to accept the conditions of use and if we are using the same browser and the same Mac from which we made the request, we will proceed to the automatic download and installation of the certificate. We already have our digital certificate installed on the Mac, now we make a backup with private key (Important) to be able to install it on the iPhone, for this we open Tools> Options> Advanced> View Certificates> People, click on the certificate and choose "Export". We must request the option to export in ".pfx" format and assign a password.

How to install the digital certificate on the iPhone

Now it's time to take advantage of the backup copy of the digital certificate to install it on our iPhone or iPad. For this we are going to take from our Mac (or from our iPhone if we have access to the file) and we are going to send the digital certificate via email to an address that is accessible from Safari, for example Hotmail or Gmail. We sent each other the digital certificate and now we are going to access the email service through Safari.

We look for the email in the inbox and click on the attached file, which will be the digital certificate. Then a new window will open that will tell us that we are installing a "Profile". We click on install in the upper right corner and then we go to Settings> General> Profiles. Here we are going to finish installing it by clicking on it, we will enter our unlock codeor the iPhone and then the key that we have put to the digital certificate and we will have the certificate installed easily and fully functional on our iPhone.

We can repeat this action with as many devices as we want, and We advise you to store a backup copy of your certificate in a cloud service or in the email because if one day you lose or restore the Mac from which we have generated the digital certificate, you will no longer be able to export it in ".pfx" format, even if you have installed this certificate on other computers, you will never go back to be able to extract the private key so we would have to start the procedure again.