An archive is a bundle that includes your product along with symbol information. You can build an archive to distribute an app for testing or to validate and submit an app to App Store Connect. Archives appear in the Archives list of the Organizer window, unless you disable this option in the scheme editor. Each archive is identified in the Archives organizer with the date and time it was created.
If you distribute a build of your app to testers, keep the archive with the debugging information to make it easier to interpret crash reports later. Save the archive for every version and build of an app you distribute. If you upload your app to App Store Connect, you’ll need the archive and associated project to jump from a stack frame in the Crashes log to the source code in the Debug navigator. You’ll also need the debugging information to symbolicate crash logs you receive from other sources.