A
Allyson Kazmucha
If you installed a beta version of iOS 8 on your iPhone or iPad and now find yourself thinking the bugs and crashes are more than you bargained for, you may want to return to iOS 7 again. Luckily, the downgrade process is fairly straight forward and simple. However, it does come with a few caveats...
What you need to downgrade from iOS 8 beta to iOS 7.1.1
In order to downgrade to iOS 7.1.1 from iOS 8, you'll only need the following:
- A PC or Mac running the most recent version of iTunes — 11.2.2 is the current version
Before beginning, it's very important to understand that you will lose all your data from iOS 8. You can not restore from an iOS 8 backup on iOS 7. If you have an older iCloud or iTunes backup from iOS 7, you can restore to that. However, if you only have an iOS 8 backup now, you won't be able to use it, so keep that in mind.
How to downgrade from an iOS 8 beta to iOS 7.1.1 official
- Turn your iPhone or iPad running iOS 8 off.
- Hold down the Home button and plug it into your computer. Keep holding the Home button until you see a screen telling you to connect to iTunes.
- iTunes should show you a popup saying that there is an iPhone or iPad that is in Recovery Mode and needs to be restored before you can use it. Click OK.
- Click on Restore iPhone... — or Restore iPad if that's what you're using.
- A popup will appear asking if you're sure you'd like to restore the iPhone or iPad in question. Click on Restore and Update.
- iTunes will then download the most recent official firmware and install it — which in this case will be iOS 7.1.1.
- That should be it. Once your iPhone or iPad reboots you should be back on iOS 7.1.1 again.
Keep in mind that you can't install to a previous version of iOS 7 since 7.1.1 is the only one Apple is currently signing. This is the reason that this process currently works. It will cease to work once the iOS 8 official comes out this fall, so keep that in mind if you think you aren't going to want to keep iOS 8.
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