Downgrading to Mojave

[iAlexG]

The Catalina public beta hasn’t work out for me at all - Finder is completely unresponsive and crashes constantly so I need to go back to Mojave.

I attempted an erase and restore from my last Time Machine backup but got an error about 1/3 of the way into the process. Before starting when I was asked to select the drive I want to restore to there was both ‘Macintosh HD’ and Macintosh HD - Data’. I selected ‘Macintosh HD’ but it said it only had 60GB free (full drive is 256GB).

Now I’m wondering if the error was because Catalina has this new two volume system for the drive.... Apple’s own pages don’t warn users about this when needing to restore to Mojave.

Has anyone encountered this problem? I’m guessing I’m going to need to put Mojave on a bootable flash drive to get rid of this drive formatting if that is the issue.

 

[TimothyR734]

Yes you will have to erase your HDD and do a clean install of macOS Mojave if you don't have a copy of macOS Mojave to make a bootable usb you can go to the macOS Mojave for unsupported Macs download dosdude1's macOS Mojave patcher once extracted put in your application folder then open it at the top on your menubar click on tools then download macOS Mojave then follow the instructions on creating it then once you mad your bootable usb boot into it use disk utility partition your hdd APFS then make you close DU then install just don't apply the post install patches

 

[enzom21]

I've restored to Mojave a couple of times. Just remove one of the volumes with Disk Utility in recovery and then you will have access to the full drive space.

 

[ChronicLynx]

The Catalina public beta hasn’t work out for me at all - Finder is completely unresponsive and crashes constantly so I need to go back to Mojave.

I attempted an erase and restore from my last Time Machine backup but got an error about 1/3 of the way into the process. Before starting when I was asked to select the drive I want to restore to there was both ‘Macintosh HD’ and Macintosh HD - Data’. I selected ‘Macintosh HD’ but it said it only had 60GB free (full drive is 256GB).

Now I’m wondering if the error was because Catalina has this new two volume system for the drive.... Apple’s own pages don’t warn users about this when needing to restore to Mojave.

Has anyone encountered this problem? I’m guessing I’m going to need to put Mojave on a bootable flash drive to get rid of this drive formatting if that is the issue.

My Finder has been awful too, almost unusable. I figure Beta 3 will be out within a week though so I'll just hang in there.

 

[tonyberinson]

My Finder has been awful too, almost unusable. I figure Beta 3 will be out within a week though so I'll just hang in there.

Wont be holding my breath.

 

[brewsternz]

I naively downloaded the Mac Catalina public beta OS today but should have read reviews first. Lots of black screens, Finder keeps crashing and many of my apps no longer supported. The VLC app opened OK but I could not shut it down - the video kept playing and it would not force quit. In the end I had to turn off my Mac. But I am philosophical as it serves me right for rushing in

 

[ChronicLynx]

I’ll wait for the next update, but if some of the core issues aren’t fixed I’ll consider reverting back to Mojave.

 

[Project Alice]

First and only rule when running a beta OS. Do not use it as your main OS. Install it on another disk, or a second partition if you have to.

That said, I just installed beta 2 on my 5,1 Mac Pro. I am experiencing a lot of the same problems you are. Finder is very slow and not responsive at all when opening folders.
System preferences is horrible. It beach balls forever on every click. Overall the system has more beach balls than my Beige G3 running Tiger. True story.
I have it installed on a second partition on my NVMe that runs Mojave as well.

 

[iAlexG]

My Finder has been awful too, almost unusable. I figure Beta 3 will be out within a week though so I'll just hang in there.

At first I thought it might be an indexing/iCloud issue. I left it to do its thing but even after indexing was done it kept crashing. iCloud never even attempted to download my documents. Even transferring something to an external drive crashed Finder in seconds. Seems like a massively unstable build! Perhaps they should have held off on the public beta for a few weeks as I've never had more than minor niggles with them in the past.
[doublepost=1561546933][/doublepost]An odd resolution to the issue - I came back this morning, booted into recovery mode, and was given the option of doing a new install of Mojave... no longer did it say the new install would be the Catalina beta... strange but the beta seems to have disappeared from my system and Mojave 14.5 installed no problems.

 

[fisherking]

i had similar issues (finder freezes, not being able to quit apps); went back to mojave (a messy affair here). i've been on the public beta since the program started, and, while i've certainly had issues, this was my most problematic beta.

will try again by pb2 or 3....

 

[faraway52]

I installed public beta yesterday and played with it. Looks nice and was pretty stable but I have no further use at this time.
The way back was easy.
1. delete the Catalina system APFS volume
2. rename the xxx-data to xxx APFS volume
3. Clone the original Mojave to xxx with CCC
Done, it is a perfect bootable Mojave system.

The CCC ran very fast. The Catalina data partition held most of the Mojave partition (as expected).

 

[martinocando]

Whoops. Almost installed it yesterday. I don't really see any feature in this release worthy of having the aggravation of multiple bugs. High Sierra and Mojave were pretty stable from PB1 and forward, but looks like is not the case here. Scary for me is the lack of support for 32-bit apps. Not because of the apps by themselves, but the drivers. Manufacturers are not forced to have 64-bit drivers ready yet, is Beta, so they are currently developing the drivers. I have a very complex concert on Mainstage, using multiple virtual instruments, and I believe some of them to be 32-bit, so I think I'll wait until everyone catches up.

 

[xgman]

I just don't get why they have to break so many things to make progress. Got to be a better way...

 

[CodeSpyder]

Some of the SwiftUI features are missing without Catalina. Too bad it's super buggy.

 

[ChronicLynx]

Imagine needing to use this beta to update your app before Catalina launches officially, except you can’t use Finder without your system freezing up.

I have other means to use a computer, it’s not the end of the world, but it’s poor quality control in my opinion... even worse they went public with it.