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by Crosseye_Jack 2457 days ago
> In apple's case you can't downgrade your OS version

You can if the old version is still being signed by Apple.

For example with the iPad Air 2 both iOS 12.4.1 and iPadOS 13.1 are currently being signed by Apple so you can downgrade for the time being. When will stop signing 12.4.1? Who knows.

1 comments

They usually stop within a few weeks if I'm not mistaken. Also AFAIK you can only rollback if you're pretty technical too.
> you can only rollback if you're pretty technical.

I wouldn’t say that you need to be too technical. I’ve helped elderly people do a restore of their iPhone over the phone. The process is basically this.

Step 1) download the software package from Apples servers. Places like https://ipsw.me/ make it easy to see what is currently signed for your device and get the download link.

2) Install iTunes if you don’t have it already on your Computer, Open iTunes and connect the device to the computer.

3) In the device options in iTunes, hold shift/option and click update, point the file dialog to the software package downloaded from Apple and confirm.

4) Watch bars progress across the screen of the device.

I rolled back my really old iPad 2 to iOS 6 recently. Was fairly easy. As long as Apple is signing it, it just takes 3 clicks on iTunes.

I wrote about my experience at https://captnemo.in/blog/2019/08/11/ipad-downgrade-ios-6-8/