How to Downgrade macOS in 2026 (Intel and Apple Silicon)

Mahesh Makvana
·
8 min read

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A buggy macOS update can break the apps you work in every day. If a jump to macOS Sequoia made things worse, or any update introduced problems you can’t live with, rolling back is worth investigating.

The catch: there’s no built-in rollback button. Downgrading means erasing your Mac’s startup disk, installing an older macOS version from scratch, and getting your data back from a backup. That sounds drastic, but both methods here are methodical and well-tested.

Before you do anything: Downgrading macOS will erase your startup disk. Without a backup, data loss is permanent. Back up before proceeding.

What to Check Before You Start

A few things to confirm before you commit to either method:

  • Your Mac must support the target macOS version. Macs can’t run a version older than the one they shipped with. An Apple Silicon Mac that originally came with Big Sur cannot go back to Catalina. That’s a hard hardware limit, not a setting you can change.
  • Identify what backup you have. A Time Machine backup made before the upgrade you want to undo is the ideal scenario. Method 1 is your path. No pre-upgrade backup? Use Method 2.
  • Back up your current data now, even if you plan to restore from an older snapshot. Anything you created after that older snapshot won’t be in it.

Method 1: Restore a Time Machine Backup

This is the fastest path back. If you have a Time Machine backup from before the upgrade you want to undo, restoring it rolls back both macOS and your data in one step.

Step 1: Connect Your Time Machine Drive and Shut Down

Connect the external drive that holds your Time Machine backups. Then shut down your Mac: Apple menu > Shut Down.

Apple menu open with "Shut Down..." option highlighted

Step 2: Enter macOS Recovery

How you get into Recovery depends on your Mac.

Apple Silicon (M1, M2, M3, M4):

  1. Press and hold the power button until “Loading startup options” appears on screen.
  2. Click Options, then click Continue.
Apple Silicon startup options screen showing a drive icon and an "Options" gear icon, with the Continue button highlighted below

Intel Mac:

  1. Press the power button, then immediately hold Cmd + R.
  2. Keep holding until the Apple logo appears, then release.
Intel Mac keyboard with the Command and R keys highlighted to indicate the key combination held at startup to enter Recovery mode

On Intel, the key combo you use determines which macOS version Recovery offers: Cmd + R reinstalls the version currently on the Mac; Option + Shift + Cmd + R reinstalls the macOS your Mac originally shipped with; Option + Cmd + R installs the latest compatible macOS. For a Time Machine restore, any of these gets you to the macOS Utilities screen, the restore steps are the same from there.

Step 3: Choose Restore From Time Machine Backup

In the macOS Utilities screen, click Restore From Time Machine Backup and then click Continue.

macOS Utilities screen in Recovery mode with four options listed: Restore From Time Machine Backup, Reinstall macOS, Safari, and Disk Utility — with Restore From Time Machine Backup highlighted

Step 4: Select Your Backup Disk

Choose your Time Machine drive from the list of sources and click Continue.

Select a Restore Source window in macOS Recovery showing an external Time Machine backup disk listed, with the Continue button visible

Step 5: Pick the Right Snapshot

You’ll see your available backups listed with dates and the macOS version each one contains. Find the backup dated before your upgrade, select it, and click Continue.

Select a Backup window showing multiple Time Machine snapshots with dates and macOS version labels, with a pre-upgrade snapshot highlighted and selected

Step 6: Select a Destination and Restore

Choose your Mac’s internal drive as the destination and click Restore. This replaces everything on the drive with the backup’s contents.

Select a Destination window in macOS Recovery with the internal Mac drive selected and the Restore button highlighted

Your Mac restarts automatically when the restore finishes. You’ll come back to the older macOS with your files, apps, and settings exactly as they were at backup time, a clean rollback with no guesswork.

Method 2: Clean Install an Older macOS From a Bootable USB Drive

No pre-upgrade Time Machine backup? You can still get to an older macOS by downloading its installer, writing it to a 16 GB USB drive, and booting from it. This method erases your internal drive completely and installs a fresh copy of your chosen macOS.

You’ll restore files afterward from whatever backup you do have, a Time Machine backup, a Carbon Copy Cloner image, a SuperDuper! clone, or files you manually copied to an external drive.

Step 1: Download the macOS Installer

On your current Mac, download the full installer for the version you want. Check the Mac App Store or Apple’s macOS downloads page. Common targets in 2026:

  • macOS Sonoma (14)
  • macOS Ventura (13)
  • macOS Monterey (12)

When the download finishes, don’t launch the installer. Confirm the installer app landed in your Applications folder.

Reminder: you can’t install a macOS version older than what your Mac shipped with. An M-series Mac that came with Ventura won’t run Monterey, regardless of what you downloaded.

Step 2: Create a Bootable USB Installer

Plug in a 16 GB USB drive with nothing on it you need to keep. Open Finder, find the drive in the sidebar, and note its exact volume name, you’ll use it in the Terminal command.

Open Terminal (press Cmd + Space, type “Terminal”, press Return).

Terminal window open and empty, ready for input, with the macOS Sequoia menu bar visible

Type the command that matches your target macOS, replacing MyVolume with your actual drive name:

macOS Sonoma:

sudo /Applications/Install macOS Sonoma.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume

macOS Ventura:

sudo /Applications/Install macOS Ventura.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume

macOS Monterey:

sudo /Applications/Install macOS Monterey.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume
Terminal window showing a createinstallmedia command for macOS Ventura running, with a "Copying files..." progress line visible below the command

Enter your admin password when prompted. Terminal erases the USB drive and copies the installer onto it, give it a few minutes. When it finishes without errors, you have a working bootable installer.

Step 3: Boot From the USB Drive

Apple Silicon:

  1. Shut down your Mac.
  2. Connect the USB installer.
  3. Press and hold the power button until “Loading startup options” appears.
  4. Select the USB installer volume from the options and click Continue.

Intel:

  1. Shut down your Mac.
  2. Connect the USB installer.
  3. Press the power button, then immediately hold the Option key.
  4. Startup Manager opens. Select the USB volume and press Return.
Startup Manager screen on an Intel Mac showing two bootable options: the internal drive and a USB installer volume — with the USB installer volume highlighted

Step 4: Erase the Internal Drive

Once the installer environment loads, open Disk Utility from the macOS Utilities screen. In the sidebar, select your internal disk, the top-level drive entry, not one of the volumes underneath it.

Click Erase and configure the settings:

  • Format: APFS
  • Scheme: GUID Partition Map

Click Erase to confirm. Everything on the drive is deleted.

Disk Utility in the macOS installer environment with the internal drive selected in the sidebar, the Erase sheet open, APFS format and GUID Partition Map scheme shown

Step 5: Install the Older macOS

Quit Disk Utility. Back in the macOS Utilities screen, choose Install macOS [version], click through the prompts, and select the newly erased internal drive as the destination. The installer handles the rest. Your Mac restarts a couple of times during installation, which is expected.

Step 6: Restore Your Files

When setup completes, you’re at a fresh macOS desktop running the version you wanted. Use Migration Assistant to pull in a Time Machine backup, a Carbon Copy Cloner clone, or another source. Or copy files back manually from wherever you stashed them.

Prep Option: Erase All Content and Settings (Apple Silicon, macOS Ventura or Later)

On Apple Silicon Macs running macOS Ventura or later, System Settings > General > Transfer or Reset > Erase All Content and Settings wipes user data and settings while leaving the macOS version unchanged.

macOS System Settings > General > Transfer or Reset panel with "Erase All Content and Settings" option highlighted

The macOS version on the drive stays as it is. This option won’t change which macOS you’re running. Where it helps: use it to get your Mac into a clean state before booting from a USB installer, and you can skip the Disk Utility erase step inside the installer environment. You still need a backup for your files before doing this.

Troubleshooting

Recovery isn’t offering the macOS version I want. The version Recovery offers depends on the key combo used (Intel) and your specific hardware. Skip Recovery entirely and use a bootable USB installer, it gives you full control over which version gets installed.

“This version of macOS cannot be installed on this computer.” Your Mac shipped with a newer macOS than what you’re trying to install. The hardware minimum is a firm limit with no workaround.

The Mac won’t boot after erasing. Open Disk Utility in Recovery and confirm the internal disk is formatted APFS with a GUID Partition Map scheme. If it isn’t, re-erase with those settings and try the install again.

The bootable USB isn’t showing up in Startup Manager. Try a different port first. On Macs with only USB-C ports, a quality USB-C hub or adapter resolves most of these cases. Also confirm that Terminal finished the createinstallmedia command without errors, if it exited cleanly, the drive should appear.

The installer stalls or errors midway. Delete the macOS installer app, re-download it from scratch, and redo the createinstallmedia step. A corrupted download is the most common culprit.

Which Method to Use

Method 1 is faster and cleaner. With a pre-upgrade Time Machine backup in hand, the full process, including Recovery, restore, and restart, typically runs well under two hours.

Method 2 takes more steps but works regardless of your backup situation. Once you have the bootable USB ready, the install itself is solid. Keep this page bookmarked for the next time an update misbehaves, given Apple’s release cadence, there will be a next time.