The Restore from Time Machine title should then appear – click Continue again.When the Recovery options appear, select ‘Restore from Time Machine backup’ and click Continue.

Turn on your Mac, and immediately hold Command + R until you see the Apple logo appear on screen.

Plug your Time Machine drive into your Mac.

When you’re ready, follow these steps to downgrade using Time Machine:

We recommend using one of the above cloud-based storage services or an external hard drive (separate from the Time Machine drive) to back up any documents, music or photos you’ve got saved on your Mac. While all your documents and data from your backup are safe, you’ll lose any data you’ve saved on your Mac since the upgrade to Catalina. If you haven’t got an existing Time Machine backup, skip on to the next section.īefore we take you through the steps of using Time Machine to downgrade from macOS Catalina, it’s worth pointing out that you’ll wipe everything on your startup disk. That’s not to say there isn’t a way, but it becomes even more challenging if you haven’t got an existing Time Machine backup. Whatever your reason for wanting to downgrade, it’s worth noting that it’s a little more complicated than the upgrade process – once your Mac is running the latest version of macOS, it won’t allow you to simply install an older version on top.

You might also find that you can’t run drivers that use kernel extensions due to other changes introduced in Catalina, possibly rendering your hardware useless.Įven if you find you’re not affected by the lack of 32-bit apps, users claim that running Apple’s latest Mac-focused update on older (but still supported) software introduces serious performance issues compared to older versions of macOS.

That’s due to the lack of support for 32-bit apps on Apple’s latest operating system, and while many apps from the likes of Adobe and Microsoft now have 64-bit equivalents, many money-savvy users refuse to move to the subscription-based model and continue to use old (but just as good) software. Security issues aside, some Mac users have found that updating to macOS Catalina has broken apps they use on a daily basis – not ideal for graphics designers and creatives that rely on third-party software, arguably Apple’s main target audience.

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