Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Rookie: Downgrading from iOS 9 to 8.3 & Restoring From iOS 9 backup to iOS 8.3

D

dialekt

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 3, 2014
102
12
Rookie Question: Can I downgrade from iOS 9 to 8.3 & Restore From iOS 9 backup to iOS 8.3? At the moment it seems as though I am not allowed to restore a newer OS backup to an older one. I would really dread doing a fresh install. Worst case I'll have to upgrade back to iOS 9 and ride it out with all of it's bugs through each beta which would be very unfortunate but it's one of the risks we take.

For some reason I thought each backup was saved within the list of device backups. But seems like it's only archiving the most recent backup which is very unfortunate because now it's only the most recent firmware backed up which is iOS9. Need to figure out how to set myself up properly the next time I try out a beta so that I can always revert back
 
Get the 8.3 .ipsw and shift/alt click Update in iTunes and double click the iOS 8.3 file. May or may not cause issues though. Fresh restore would be best.
 
dialekt said:
Rookie Question: Can I downgrade from iOS 9 to 8.3 & Restore From iOS 9 backup to iOS 8.3? At the moment it seems as though I am not allowed to restore a newer OS backup to an older one. I would really dread doing a fresh install. Worst case I'll have to upgrade back to iOS 9 and ride it out with all of it's bugs through each beta which would be very unfortunate but it's one of the risks we take.

For some reason I thought each backup was saved within the list of device backups. But seems like it's only archiving the most recent backup which is very unfortunate because now it's only the most recent firmware backed up which is iOS9. Need to figure out how to set myself up properly the next time I try out a beta so that I can always revert back
Click to expand...

Before upgrading iOS, ALWAYS go into your mobilesync folder and append something like "- iOS 8.3" at the end of the folder name. That way when your iphone backs up again, it will create a new folder and you'll always have your previous backup untouched.
 
  • Like
Reactions: IronWaffle, darkfiber, dialekt and 2 others
spoa94 said:
Explain how to do this please
Click to expand...

goto %appdata%\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\ on Windows or wherever your backups are stored on OS X. Edit Info.plist with a text editor.

You will see
<key>Product Version</key>
<string>8.3</string>

This indicates the version. It may be 9.0 if you are on iOS 9. change it to match the version of the iOS you want to restore this onto. YMMV and I would recommend backing up the file before you edit it. I haven't done this from 9.0 to 8.3 so who knows what kind of weird issues it may introduce.
 
  • Like
Reactions: IronWaffle and Bathplug
dialekt said:
Rookie Question: Can I downgrade from iOS 9 to 8.3 & Restore From iOS 9 backup to iOS 8.3? At the moment it seems as though I am not allowed to restore a newer OS backup to an older one. I would really dread doing a fresh install. Worst case I'll have to upgrade back to iOS 9 and ride it out with all of it's bugs through each beta which would be very unfortunate but it's one of the risks we take.

For some reason I thought each backup was saved within the list of device backups. But seems like it's only archiving the most recent backup which is very unfortunate because now it's only the most recent firmware backed up which is iOS9. Need to figure out how to set myself up properly the next time I try out a beta so that I can always revert back
Click to expand...

Have you already sorted this? If not I found the best way to do this is if you are running time machine backups for your Mac to go into the last one you had from yesterday or whichever backup had your newest 8.3 backup and then restore it to the desktop, then either delete or rename your new 9.0 backup folder and drag the 8.3 one in, it will then show in iTunes when you restore, though if you did this with changing the info.plist could you say if that worked or not?
 
Trying the 'update' option to update(or downgrade) from iOS 9 to 8.3 doesn't work properly. After going through the complete update process, it shows an error after which the only option is to 'Restore' the iPhone.

If you restore your iPhone, choose the method of restoring backup from iTunes. Then you should be able to get a drop down option to select your recent backups made of your iPhone. Select the one that mentions iOS 8.3(or whichever you want) and let it do the rest.
 
kevroc said:
Before upgrading iOS, ALWAYS go into your mobilesync folder and append something like "- iOS 8.3" at the end of the folder name. That way when your iphone backs up again, it will create a new folder and you'll always have your previous backup untouched.
Click to expand...

I definitely should have done this. At the moment I just decided to live a life full of sadness and downgrade to 8.3 with a fresh install. I'm considering upgrading to 8.4 Beta 4 ....the highlight of iOS 9 was the font and newly refreshed music player. I'm reading around to see if 8.4 appears stable and everyone keeps talking about landscape being removed from music player or something? Whatever the case is...if I upgrade to 8.4 beta and 8.4 gets publicly released in final form..would iTunes recognize it as an upgrade or could I just restore from backup of the beta without any issues, after restoring in DFU mode to final revision of 8.4?
 
If you get stuck with a restore screen maybe you can kick it out with tiny umbrella.

I updated to iOS 9 without a backup and was surprised the iCloud backup was not working, socks but I downgraded and did a fresh restore (lost my 277 flappy bird score ).
 
If you backed up your iPhone to iTunes before installing iOS 9, put the phone into DFU mode and have iTunes download and restore the 8.3 IPSW to the phone. Then, restore from the iOS 8 backup from before the upgrade.
 
dialekt said:
I definitely should have done this. At the moment I just decided to live a life full of sadness and downgrade to 8.3 with a fresh install. I'm considering upgrading to 8.4 Beta 4 ....the highlight of iOS 9 was the font and newly refreshed music player. I'm reading around to see if 8.4 appears stable and everyone keeps talking about landscape being removed from music player or something? Whatever the case is...if I upgrade to 8.4 beta and 8.4 gets publicly released in final form..would iTunes recognize it as an upgrade or could I just restore from backup of the beta without any issues, after restoring in DFU mode to final revision of 8.4?
Click to expand...

I believe the last beta is the official release, so you don't need to upgrade at that point as you are already on the release version.

I'm not sure I could handle doing a clean install, I'd probably just switch to Android at that point to suffer a different kind of misery :)
 
iamMacPerson said:
If you backed up your iPhone to iTunes before installing iOS 9, put the phone into DFU mode and have iTunes download and restore the 8.3 IPSW to the phone. Then, restore from the iOS 8 backup from before the upgrade.
Click to expand...
Just wanted to chime in and mention this. I was able to go from 9 Beta 1 to 8.4 Beta 4 without using DFU mode. Just option-click the restore button in iTunes, select the ipsw, and it worked.

I'm not sure if this was because 8.4 beta 4 came out 1 day after 9b1 and it let me because it was "newer" or maybe DFU isn't actually required and people just say it is.
 
So I cannot downgrade back to 8.3 and restore from my iCloud backup if that backup was from Beta 9?
 
AbSoluTc said:
So I cannot downgrade back to 8.3 and restore from my iCloud backup if that backup was from Beta 9?
Click to expand...

No. You would not be able to restore from the iCloud backup as traces of the iOS 9 beta would be there from your backup which may crash iOS 8.

The only way to restore would be if you had taken a backup on your local machine and restore from there.
 
skyperbon said:
No. You would not be able to restore from the iCloud backup as traces of the iOS 9 beta would be there from your backup which may crash iOS 8.

The only way to restore would be if you had taken a backup on your local machine and restore from there.
Click to expand...

Of course my stupid self did not do this. Ugh. The battery drain is terrible and wanted to downgrade. I have never done that with a beta before. Oh well, live and learn. Hopefully b2 will address the issue.
 
AbSoluTc said:
Of course my stupid self did not do this. Ugh. The battery drain is terrible and wanted to downgrade. I have never done that with a beta before. Oh well, live and learn. Hopefully b2 will address the issue.
Click to expand...

If i remember correctly, I had done the same thing when iOS 7 beta came out. Lost some important backups. But as you mentioned, 'live and learn'.
 
I have a question. If i downgrade my ios 9 beta version to ios8.3 by using ipsw, s it considered as jailbreaking? Is there any affect if i do that.? Any other way rather than jailbreak my iphone to downgrade it to ios9?

*I just upgraded ios 9 beta versions yesterday.
 
patricktan97 said:
I have a question. If i downgrade my ios 9 beta version to ios8.3 by using ipsw, s it considered as jailbreaking? Is there any affect if i do that.? Any other way rather than jailbreak my iphone to downgrade it to ios9?

*I just upgraded ios 9 beta versions yesterday.
Click to expand...

This operation has nothing to do with jailbreaking, as both of these are official Apple firmware files, albeit you shouldn't be using the iOS 9 beta as you are not a developer but no one's going to care unless you do.
 
Sappharad said:
Just wanted to chime in and mention this. I was able to go from 9 Beta 1 to 8.4 Beta 4 without using DFU mode. Just option-click the restore button in iTunes, select the ipsw, and it worked.

I'm not sure if this was because 8.4 beta 4 came out 1 day after 9b1 and it let me because it was "newer" or maybe DFU isn't actually required and people just say it is.
Click to expand...

Same here, you can jump from version to version without consequence other than no being able to restore the old backup as it is not compatible anymore.
 
iamMacPerson said:
If you backed up your iPhone to iTunes before installing iOS 9, put the phone into DFU mode and have iTunes download and restore the 8.3 IPSW to the phone. Then, restore from the iOS 8 backup from before the upgrade.
Click to expand...

This works unless the iPhone hasn't backed itself up after the update, if it has you have your old files in a backup with iOS 9 overwritten on it, hence it's not going to be able to restore to 8.4 without modification.

I have tried to modify the plist file where the iOS version 9 is mentioned, but once the restore finished the first thing I noticed was that Messages didn't display anything. Once I changed and reverted to the previous iOS 9 backup Messages were back, so I guess there's at least this incompatibility to think of.
 
As others have said, once you overwrite your old backup with iOS 9 then you will not be able to restore from that back up. You will have to restore from an older backup if one is available.

I am thinking if you had the foresight you could have backed up prior to upgrading to 9, and then made a copy of that backup to a different location. That way you can save the iOS 9 backup along with having the 8.3 available if you wanted to downgrade.
 
If I downgrade ios9 to ios 8.3 by clicking "restore iphone" will my data inside my phone be erased? Is there any ways for me the keep my data? I wanna downgrade ios9 to ios8.3, it drains a lot battery..weaken the battery life.
 
patricktan97 said:
If I downgrade ios9 to ios 8.3 by clicking "restore iphone" will my data inside my phone be erased? Is there any ways for me the keep my data? I wanna downgrade ios9 to ios8.3, it drains a lot battery..weaken the battery life.
Click to expand...

Restoring the phone reinstalls the most recent public release of the operating system (iOS 8.3 currently) and erases everything. If you don't have a backup from BEFORE you upgraded to iOS 9, you're SOL.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back