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I can't restore my backup after trying to downgrade to iOS 12 from iOS 13

I was having too many issues with iOS beta with my WiFi and Cell service not working right and I have an important phone call that i'm expecting, I didn't want to miss this call so I decided to downgrade my iOS. However, for whatever reason, my phone didn't downgrade successfully and I needed to factory reset my phone. This doesn't seem to be a problem, since I have my backup that I just made. After I factory reset my phone back to iOS 12, I can't put my backups on my phone because it's too old. At this point I just want my data back so I just bit my tongue and installed iOS 13 Beta again to circumvent this issue. But iTunes is still telling me that my phone is too old for my backups, so now I may have no way of recovering any of my old messages or settings, I really don't want to have to reinstall all my apps, download my music and get the accounts right again, is there any way to fix this? I saw that messing with the info.plist file and changing the OS may help, but it says it's on iOS 13 and that's what I have so I don't even know what I'd change it to.

iPhone X, iOS 13

Posted on Jun 28, 2019 10:39 PM

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Posted on Jun 28, 2019 10:49 PM

I did update to iOS 13 to install the backup it was still saying I was too old, What's weird is that just restarting iTunes seemed to fix this issue. it must have been a cache setting on iTunes. It must have thought I was still using an iOS 12 device, until I closed it and opened it again!

2 replies

Jun 28, 2019 10:44 PM in response to dwilso81

What's clearly happening is you made a backup while on iOS 13 beta, and unfortunately not a backup before you installed the beta. Therefore, other than your iCloud data you can sync with, you won't be able to use that backup until you upgrade to iOS 13 when it comes out for real.


iOS 12 (or earlier) doesn't know how to handle an iOS 13 (or later) backup. Backups are in fact backwards compatible, but they are not "forwards" compatible.

I can't restore my backup after trying to downgrade to iOS 12 from iOS 13

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