While OS X Lion is an excellent operating system, it may not be perfect for some people. Since some applications haven’t been updated to run on Lion yet, some users may need to downgrade to Snow Leopard in order to keep using the applications they need on a regular basis. In this video, I’ll show the best ways to downgrade from Lion to Snow Leopard.
Michael Steeber is a student who is obsessed with everything Apple. He enjoys making videos and runs the MSComputerVideos YouTube channel in his free time. You can follow him on Twitter as well.
76 responses to “Downgrade OS X Lion To Snow Leopard [Video How-To]”
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You say this is a video about the best way to downgrade, which you follow by saying is from a time machine backup. But then you spend a good 3 minutes talking about everything but restoring from time machine.
Plus you make a lot of assumptions instead of actually mentioning them before someone screws themselves by hitting erase or whatever and then hear “you should of course had made a back up first”
And you ignore important details like your mail box file has been altered by Lion to a form that Snow Leopard can’t open.
Given that you have proclaimed yourself an expert and trainer, this video is lacking.
I’m by no means an expert, I never mentioned that. I have a lot to learn yet.
If you have an SL mirror backup made before you upgraded to Lion:
1-Copy the /Users/<username> folder from the internal Mac’s Lion drive to the Snow Leopard backup using Carbon Copy Cloner.
2-Delete the files in ~/Library/Preferences on the SL drive. (You will have crashes and apps might fail to open windows if you don’t.)
3-Reboot from your external SL backup.
4-Once booted on the external SL drive, format the internal Mac drive as 1 Partition.
5-Mirror copy the ENTIRE SL boot drive to the internal drive of the Mac.
6-Set the internal Mac drive as the startup disc and reboot.
DONE! This worked perfectly for me. I was grateful to have kept the core mirror and only had to update user generated content!
I can’t give steps for a situation where you didn’t keep a snapshot of your SL setup. I’ve yet to try reverting with a clean install of SL.</username>
I don’t these will work with any of the new MacBook Airs.
This video seems like bad advice all around. It’s really confusingly explained and contains blended advice that just doesn’t make a lot of sense. It would be really easy for a novice to start to follow this advice and then lose their entire system.
This is better (and much clearer), advice than the video.
But yeah, if you don’t have a full backup nothing will help you anyway, and if you are the type to have a full backup, then you probably know how to do this stuff already.
external cd drive
When you restore from time machine to a snow leopard backup, isn’t that going to erase all files created in the Lion enviroment?
I don’t see how you came to this conclusion.. Backup; erase HD; install… That’s it.
Do SL’s migration tools handle a Lion based user profile? I’m tempted to do a test!
If you have a new MacBook Air or Mac Mini which was released in July
2011 (i.e. latest models shipping with Lion and no restore media) – you
cannot install Snow Leopard onto these machines. Although I have not
tried it personally I’ve seen many comments, stories, and discussions
about this on Apple’s forums.
Do not attempt to downgrade to Snow Leopard on these machines.
I requested and appreciate this video, and as with all videos
like this, they are a spring board for discussion and an opportunity for us to
pool our collective knowledge; there is no one or final answer. I disagree with Prof Peabody though I find
Mike’s video’s consistently outstanding, and they are greatly appreciated. I will tell you how I downgraded to SNL as
there is always more than one way to skin a cat—forgive me –couldn’t
resist.
1.
Prior to downloading Lion and ever since I
obtained my iMac in January I used Carbon Copy Cloner to make a backup
copy—lesson #1 if you didn’t do that this is an opportunity to do it in the
future. It is a great program. At this point, at very least, you can Clone Lion
for any unforeseen catastrophe.
2.
See instructions at CCC web site: http://www.bombich.com/get_rea…
3.
Note: CCC will not remove or copy the “Recovery
partition for Lion” on the Mac HD
4.
To remove the “Recovery partition for Lion”
instead of reformatting the hard drive I used the information in this
website: http://osxdaily.com/2011/06/30…
5.
In my case, the Recovery Partition was in disk0s3
and I used the following command at terminal: diskutil eraseVolume HFS+ Blank /dev/disk0s3
6.
After
doing that I departed from the instructions and went directly to Disk utility
since after you delete the data on the Lion recovery partition the partition is
viewable as a blank (empty) partition in the disk utility. I then deleted the blank partition and the
Mac Hard Drive automatically resized to one partition.
7.
Finally, with CCC I actually cloned both Lion
and SNL so this is something everyone can do starting today at least. I once read a quote “there are two kinds of
people those that back up their data and those that will”.
8.
PS—- CCC is a free program but I donated
because it’s a life saver. Now I can go
between both Lion (presently on an external HD–buggy) and SNL (on the main HD—rock
solid), and have the best of both worlds Good Luck!
Ok, it took hours, but the experiment is done. I did a straight format and install of SL, and used its profile migration tool to grab all my user data form Lion. Everything seemed to work well.
But, after the restoration, I booted into SL and the my profile password refused to work. Weird! I’ll try the password reset tool off the DVD when I get more time.
I requested and appreciate this video, and as with all videos
like this, they are a spring board for discussion and an opportunity for us to
pool our collective knowledge; there is no one or final answer. I disagree with Prof Peabody though I find
Mike’s video’s consistently outstanding, and they are greatly appreciated. I will tell you how I downgraded to SNL as
there is always more than one way to skin a cat—forgive me –couldn’t
resist.
1.
Prior to downloading Lion and ever since I
obtained my iMac in January I used Carbon Copy Cloner to make a backup
copy—lesson #1 if you didn’t do that this is an opportunity to do it in the
future. It is a great program. At this point, at very least, you can Clone Lion
for any unforeseen catastrophe.
2.
See instructions at CCC web site: http://www.bombich.com/get_rea…
3.
Note: CCC will not remove or copy the “Recovery
partition for Lion” on the Mac HD
4.
To remove the “Recovery partition for Lion”
instead of reformatting the hard drive I used the information in this
website: http://osxdaily.com/2011/06/30…
5.
In my case the Recovery Partition was in disk0s3
and I used the following command at terminal:
diskutil eraseVolume HFS+ Blank
/dev/disk0s3
6.
After
doing that I departed from the instructions and went directly to Disk utility
since after you delete the data on the Lion recovery partition the partition is
viewable as a blank (empty) partition in the disk utility. I then deleted the blank partition and the
Mac Hard Drive automatically resized to one partition.
7.
Finally, with CCC I actually cloned both Lion
and SNL so this is something everyone can do starting today at least. I once read a quote “there are two kinds of
people those that back up their data and those that will”.
8.
PS—- CCC is a free program but I donated
because it’s a life saver. Now I can go
between both Lion (presently on an external HD–buggy) and SNL (on the main HD—rock
solid), and have the best of both worlds Good Luck!
Can I run iTunes 9.2.1 in Lion?
lion was the biggest waste of time!!!!!!! from start to finish! Sea Lion sucks!
FUCK YOU SEA LION!!!!!! You wasted aver 17 hours of my life from the downloading… to the uninstalling to the reinstalling snow leopard! This product was pushed on us to soon! This should be called BETA SEA LION because its so slow and bloated! Now I know why Steve Jobs is throwing in the towl for this sorry OS! Ok.. Now that I got that off my chest! I am sure I will download Lion again however not for another 5-8 months until bugs are worked out and when it starts working properly! Right now its like vista was to the PC.. All flash but extremely slow and frustrating to use because its sLOWWWsss down your system! Yes I am being unrealistic but fuck you for wasting my time with this unfinished excuse for a product!
Shock JOCK!
I followed your advice to the letter and it worked! Thanks for the help!
ok, so there was nothing in that video that isn’t obvious for a seasoned Mac user… how about a tip of how to migrate backwards, email intact etc with no data loss, without TimeMachine that doesn’t say “wipe your drive and reinstall everything” (i.e. some data stuff was changed in 10.7, can we migrate it back??)
ps I’m guessing a no there….
Your video was extremely helpful. I have been a lover of APPLE products for many many years but yesterday was very disappointed. I purchased a custom built 27″ iMac that was totally decked out with literally everything. It came with LION. My understanding from their Apple Store advertisement for the iMac was that it shipped with Snow Leopard and we had 30 days to upgrade. In my business I do video production and part of that is DVD duplications. None of my DVD duplication equipment is compatible with LION. Apple would not help me with this. They wanted me to send the computer back to them for a full credit rather than downgrading to Snow Leopard. UNBELIEVABLE!! Now, after going on line to get help (which I should have done that several days ago) I now see that it is possible to downgrade.
Hi there. Thanks for the video. Unfortunately, when I attempt to downgrade via a Snow Leopard Time Machine backup, I get a message saying I can’t because the backup was done from a different computer. Is there any way around this?
You also look like a young John Wayne gacy in your profile pic.
Thank you so much for that video! Yours was the first that popped up when I searched it in Google and it was extremely helpful! I was just about to reboot without backing up my system! I would have been so disappointed. Great video! Short, informative and to the point. :)
That was mean and hurtful.
This video tells you nothing that isn’t blatantly obvious already. You mean if I boot from a Snow Leopard DVD I can install SL? Wow!
I expected something with a little more actual content such as how to migrate a profile set up in Lion to a SL install or how to restore to a Mac that shipped after the retail release of SL and therefore requires a newer build.
I appreciate the effort but the final product was lacking in any useful content
I think you video will work with old imac’s but the i7 I bought a couple of weeks ago with Lion installed was a bit tricky to get SL to work. I decided to make a small partition then I could play around with lion and when all my software is updated use. When I first tried to install off the SL disk the machine would kernel panic and wouldn’t boot. I then tried to install from my laptop to the imac in target disk mode same problem. What I forgot to do was run the software update after my install after doing this the machine will boot in SL or lion. It now works, I did have an issue after migrating leopard to SL and the imac would’t boot all the way. I would get to the desktop screen and get the spinning wheel of death. I did another install and so far so good. No issues migration assistance Leopard to Lion.
Uhh, lion is the best os x that exsists, apple worked so har on it that it turned out to be the best, I love mission control and I love how that old scrolling sidebar on SL is gone, lion is great and it is the future for the next os x’s.
thank you!! so……after doing the restall of snow leopard i am faced with the issue of what to do with my back up i made (after installing lion) on my 1 TB harddrive.. will the back up be “lion”?
can I put my files and apps back on snow leopard…aka iphoto especially
useless
My Mac crashed when booting to the snow leopard disc, also the time machine backup can’t be used if it isn’t from the same version of machine.
Flat out — if you use your Mac to make a living, avoid LION at all costs. It’s Apple’s Vista. Too many issues. It’s as if everything was perfected in Snow Leo, then someone at Apple wanted to add chrome spinners and flames. The only nice thing I like about the OS is the log-in screen, which can display some vital info about your Mac without the need to type in your passcode. But woopde fricken daw if that’s the only usable upgrade for me.
Bobbi, I had to do the transition backwards. Here was what I did. This is the hard way, but it also insures a clean install.
1. Take a screenshot of your Mac desktop and bar, and a screenshot of all your apps too. Makes knowing what to reinstall and where to put it much easier later.
2. Some software must be authorized for your machine, such as Adobe products. Make sure to deactivate them first.
3. Dive into the folder: Users / (account name) / Library — Here you’ll want to select your Thunderbird folder and Stickies pref file, and back both up. This assumes you use Thunderbird. If you don’t I don’t know how to help you on that one. Can’t locate your User account Library? It’s hidden by default in LION (stupid move, Apple). Do a quick google search on how to make it active (I don’t recall at moment) and you can start backing up those items.
4. Jump into your User/ Music folder, and copy your iTunes folder, en mass, to your backup. Do the same for any photos, etc.
5. Restart your mac from Snow Leo disk, and, utilizing Disk Utility from the top menu just before install, repartition the drive to it’s full capacity, using GUID file system. Install Snow Leo.
6. When Snow Leo is done, you need to reinstall all of your missing apps
7. With Thunderbird reinstalled, copy back the Thunderbird folder and stickies note to y our User library. Once done, firing up stickies or Thunderbird should work as previous, with all messages intact.
8. Reinstall expensive Apps like Adobe CS5 and reenter pass code
9. Go back to your screen captures of apps and desktop, so you don’t miss anything.
10. After a day or two of minor tweaks, enjoy your new Snow Leo install
I don’t keep full backups, just key things like email, itunes and stickies. If you check farther up, I give a solution for someone in my position. I downgraded.
Forget the migration assistant. You could wind up with Snow Leo looking to only grant permissions to items that belong to the Lion-based user account.
I regret not waiting for several point updates, and forget the system requirements. I was above the bottom. I should of had no issues, but Lion has a bad case of rabies.
Switching between open documents can randomly take 30-60 seconds. It hangs, freezes, get tempermental, and it really doesn’t bring anything new to the table. Spaces is better implemented, but if it takes a year to navigate between my spaces, it’s useless. Or, a space will be in tact, but another one is frozen.
Mission control would be great… if it wasn’t so hung up half the time. Unless you have a Mac that’s 1-2 years old, don’t even think about upgrading for you own sanity.
if i dont have my disc backed up and have no time machine drive can i still reinstall from my SL CD? Im a dumbass with stuff like this but i need help. I cant use like 40% of m software!
I just bought a Macbook Pro and I am trying to downgrade to Snow Leapord. I inserted Snow Leopard, rebooted while holding down the C key, it does not open anything it just gives me 3 beeps and pauses then 3 beeps pause 3 beeps …
Any suggestions?
Don’t tell that to me. My Powerbook G4 has better battery life than my MBP.
if you bought the MacBook with Lion Build-in, restore to lion, that this MUST run JUST Lion, non Snow Leopard; in any case, use a virtual Machine…
If i do this will my applications be deleted?
once you downgrade can you use the migration assistant in Snow Leopard to restore your applications from the lion HD?
Lion is a disaster. I just upgraded and there are tons of PowerPC software I MUST RUN TO DO MY WORK. Apple has seriously screwed up by abandoning Rosetta. Emulation is easy. They have the computing power. They have the money to spend on maintaining compatibility (BILLIONS in the bank) and their screwing over users by destroying access to old vital software. I’m wiping my drive and going back to my clone of Snow Leopard with Rosetta. Lion is a major waste of time and money.