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You can mark devices as used for development in XCode organizer.

What does it actually do internally on iOS device? Does it set some kind of flag? Does it install something?

Is there API on device (including private) to check whether it's development or not?

Is there API on device (including private) to mark device as development?

I think I found small piece of information here: What does the "Use for Development" button in Xcode Organizer to an iOS device? However it covers only partly a question what does actually happen with iOS device.

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Use for development will copy the UDID, upload it to your itunes connect account, update profiles and allow you to refresh development profiles to be used with your device. These profiles will be installed on the device when you do builds or ad hoc installs.

Its a huge convenience compared to doing all steps manually.

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What I saw that I can terminate this process in the middle (when no development profiles are copied) and sill it's marked as development devices afterwards. Interesting, does desktop stores the list of development devices or is there some flag on device for this? Also, I saw in couple of places in Apple documentation that some functionality will work only on development devices. I wonder how does it work? How does iOS know whether it's development device or not? –  Victor Ronin Dec 4 '12 at 22:33
I believe it also copies debug symbols for the device which is probably stored within xcode to be used with debugging. –  rooster117 Dec 4 '12 at 22:36

Regarding checking whether device is development. Apparently, this flag is managed by lockdown.

As I understand from this link there is a way to connect to lockdown to get some values: http://iphonedevwiki.net/index.php/Liblockdown.dylib

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