Do you hate iOS 8? Maybe you’re an iPhone 4s owner who made the mistake of believing Apple when they said that iOS 8 supported your device, or maybe you’re just a luddite who hates change!
Either way, you’re in luck: If you regret your upgrade, you’ve got a rare opportunity to turn the clock back. You can downgrade your device from iOS 8 to iOS 7.1.2, if you act fast.
Generally speaking, Apple doesn’t allow you to downgrade your version of iOS once you upgrade. In order to install a version of iOS on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, iTunes first checks to see if Apple is still signing that version for your device. Usually, Apple only signs one version of iOS — the latest one — for every device capable of running it. So if your iPhone can only run iOS 7.1.2, iOS 8 won’t be signed for your device. And if you’re running iOS 8, iOS 7.1.2 will no longer be signed, so you can’t reinstall it.
Right now, though, Apple’s doing something largely unprecedented: signing both iOS 8 and iOS 7.1.2 for devices capable of running both. This means that if you updated to iOS 8, you can downgrade back to iOS 7.1.2 just by installing it from an IPSW package file through iTunes. (For a good overview on how to do this, check out iDownloadBlog’s walk-through.)
If you regret iOS 8 for any reason — for example, you gave up your jailbreak to check iOS 8 out, then regretted your decision — you can still go back. But this won’t last long. Apple will stop signing iOS 7.1.2 soon, possibly even today. If this is what you’re going to do, get going.
Via: iDownloadBlog
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
9 responses to “Regret updating to iOS 8? You can still downgrade”
Actually, iOS 8 runs ok on my wife’s iPhone 4S. Its not what I’d call fast, but if you disable animations using the “reduce motion” option, its definitely usable. The same goes for my iPad 2. Works fine if you turn on reduce motion.
Upgraded on my iPad Mini 1, and went back to 7.1.2 on the same day. It was just generally slower to load content, and there were some glitches as well.
WHERE is this? under settings?
I can’t imagine this would allow you to downgrade to iOS7 on a 6/6Plus to make it jail breakable, but has anyone tried?
the 6 has a new processor so it will likely not be able to be jailbroken even with iOS 7
Right, of course, just wishful thinking. Loving my Plus but stilling missing my jb as with every upgrade.
There is no iOS 7.1.2 or any other firmware apart from iOS 8 for the iPhone 6 and 6+
Every time I go into my settings, it crashes, lots of bugs- not a fan of this upgrade because it seems to be running my battery out fast- and I have went through all the settings to turn off- there’s a lot of hidden features now that you have to turn off which I’m not liking.
does apple till date sign ios 7.1.2 cause i am fully pissed with this ios 8