I upgraded my wife's M1 MacBook Air to Sequoia, but found that her favorite program will not run. I would like to downgrade back to Sonoma and have a Time Machine backup of her computer before the upgrade. How should I do this? I know this question has been asked a million times, but I would like a fresh answer to eliminate confusion. Thanks.
BTW I no longer have the 13" MacBook Air shown below.
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
MacBook Air 13″
The answer hasn’t changed.
Two Options,
1) if you have room, create and APFS Volume on your startup drive and install Sonoma there. Migrate user from the backup. If all is working, you can delete the Sequoia volumes.
2) You must erase the drive completely and install the previous OS. That is best done using a Bootable USB Installer.
Links to creating bootable USB installer and erasing in the following link.
How to reinstall macOS - Apple Support
The answer hasn’t changed.
Two Options,
1) if you have room, create and APFS Volume on your startup drive and install Sonoma there. Migrate user from the backup. If all is working, you can delete the Sequoia volumes.
2) You must erase the drive completely and install the previous OS. That is best done using a Bootable USB Installer.
Links to creating bootable USB installer and erasing in the following link.
How to reinstall macOS - Apple Support
Do you have a backup of her data prior to Sequoia? If you’re only back up of the data was made under Sequoia, you cannot migrate that data back to Sonoma. You could manually move some of the data back, but migration assistant will not allow you to migrate newer data to an older OS.
if you do have a back up of the data from a Sonoma install, just erase the drive, install Sonoma, and migrate the data back.
It’s not a partition. Don’t partition your drive. Add an APFS volume in disk utility. Once you have a volume run the installer for Sonoma and use that volume as the destination.
Make sure you have access to a Sonoma back up. You can migrate old data to a newer OS, but you can’t migrate new data to an old OS.When you install Sonoma don’t use the same username that you plan on migrating because you cannot merge, use your accounts through migration assistant
OK but I notice that there's enough free space to install the OS, but not enough to transfer the data from the Time Machine backup. What risk would I run by installing Sonoma in the free space, making sure it's running properly and then deleting the rest of the data on the drive to make room for the transfer from Time Machine?
Daniel Gold3 wrote:
Hello again. Quick question: how big a USB stick do I need to accommodate the bootable drive software?
I think it requires a 16GB drive (or larger). The download is somewhere around 12-15GB.
Hello again. Here's where I am with this: I can create the bootable installer and have downloaded the Sonoma installation app into the Applications folder. However, there's only 30 GB or so of free space on the hard drive. I assume that's not enough to install Sonoma. What do I risk by deleting the data on the computer (deleting the container) and then installing Sonoma? Is it possible to remain without an operating system? If so, what do you do in that case? BTW I've backed up the computer with Time Machine.
Thanks.
Hello. Just an update on my dilemma. Before I went ahead with the downgrade, I looked to see whether my wife's program (called Embrilliance, for machine embroidery) had been updated to run on Sequoia. It turned out they did update it, so I didn't need to proceed with the downgrade. Alls well that ends well.
Thanks for your help.
Thanks. Option 1 seems better. How do I install Sonoma on the partition?
Hello again. Quick question: how big a USB stick do I need to accommodate the bootable drive software?
I do have a Sonoma backup. Thanks for your answer.
How to downgrade M1 MacBook Air from Sequoia to Sonoma?
