Downgrade High Sierra to Yosemite

[JOSmith99]

Did you erase (format) your internal drive to HFS (you only stated "journaled")?

The 2016 MacBook can support El Capitan since that was the original OS used on the early 2016 MacBooks.

Did you check the links in Post #2 on how to revert from HS to a older OS?

Part of the problem is that your internal boot SSD was automatically converted to APFS when High Sierra was installed (see the "APFS compatibility" section):
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208018
Your El Capitan USB installer can not read a APFS HS volume.

Remember, internet recovery is designed to install the OS that shipped with your Mac, which in this case was HS. BTW, as of Sierra 10.12.4 COMMAND+OPTION+R will install the latest OS that your Mac will support. Now to install the OS that shipped with your Mac, the key combination is Shift-Option-Command-R:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

OH wow OK. I did not realize they had changed that. Typical. Thanks for that info. I will keep it in mind when I help people in the future.

 

[kissymac7]

Did you erase (format) your internal drive to HFS (Mac OS Extended - you only stated "journaled")?

The 2016 MacBook can support El Capitan since that was the original OS used on the 2016 MacBooks.

Did you check the links in Post #2 on how to revert from HS to a older OS?

Part of the problem is that your internal boot SSD was automatically converted to APFS when High Sierra was installed (see the "APFS compatibility" section):
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208018
Your El Capitan USB installer can not read a APFS HS volume.

Remember, internet recovery is designed to install the OS that shipped with your Mac, which in this case was HS. BTW, as of Sierra 10.12.4 COMMAND+OPTION+R will install the latest OS that your Mac will support. Now to install the OS that shipped with your Mac, the key combination is Shift-Option-Command-R:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

Hi actually I did try to reformat it as you stated but I think it woudnt matter since the box does show it came with sierra. Not high sierra but after research it says what ever your macbook ships with is usually the lowest software you can go imstall
[doublepost=1509152299][/doublepost]

OH wow OK. I did not realize they had changed that. Typical. Thanks for that info. I will keep it in mind when I help people in the future.

Hi thanks for your responses well after two days of messing with this laptop I pretty much gave up on installing yosemite. I did go to the apple store and they pretty much was like there is no way to revert to older softwares in newer macbooks.

I did take your advice and installed the vm so It worked perfectly in that sense. I was able to install yosemite thru vm but the major problem became the resolution. I tried to change the settings in parallel for the resoultion to set at its retina 1440 by 900 but it wouldnt allow it for the life of me

It kept its resolution at 1024 by 768 so it felt like i was looking at an air screen all over again.
My main purposes is to use photoshop and it serves no purpose with low display settings

Although i have n idea why parelles has it like that because i have paralles on my macbook 15 and i can use high resolution

I gave up after that and just installed sierra

Alot of my softwares became outdated or unusable beacause of sierra so i was forced to update each and everyone which was time consuming

Problem is i still use my macbook pro 15 as a main laptop and those use older versions of my softwares and this macbook 12 inch uses now the newer versions which will mess up my work flow

I still have paralles installes with yosemite on here, so maybe i ll take some more time to see whats going on with the resolution issue

But this whole scenrio has already taken 5 days of my time

I really wished some one at apple would of told me to install a vm i didnt even think of that but thanks to you that was the only work around

Apple is really forcing us to stick with how they want things and its frustrating.

For anyone else dont update your os if u dont need to, its a pain in the neck

Thanks for your help

 

[JOSmith99]

Hi actually I did try to reformat it as you stated but I think it woudnt matter since the box does show it came with sierra. Not high sierra but after research it says what ever your macbook ships with is usually the lowest software you can go imstall
[doublepost=1509152299][/doublepost]


Hi thanks for your responses well after two days of messing with this laptop I pretty much gave up on installing yosemite. I did go to the apple store and they pretty much was like there is no way to revert to older softwares in newer macbooks.

I did take your advice and installed the vm so It worked perfectly in that sense. I was able to install yosemite thru vm but the major problem became the resolution. I tried to change the settings in parallel for the resoultion to set at its retina 1440 by 900 but it wouldnt allow it for the life of me

It kept its resolution at 1024 by 768 so it felt like i was looking at an air screen all over again.
My main purposes is to use photoshop and it serves no purpose with low display settings

Although i have n idea why parelles has it like that because i have paralles on my macbook 15 and i can use high resolution

I gave up after that and just installed sierra

Alot of my softwares became outdated or unusable beacause of sierra so i was forced to update each and everyone which was time consuming

Problem is i still use my macbook pro 15 as a main laptop and those use older versions of my softwares and this macbook 12 inch uses now the newer versions which will mess up my work flow

I still have paralles installes with yosemite on here, so maybe i ll take some more time to see whats going on with the resolution issue

But this whole scenrio has already taken 5 days of my time

I really wished some one at apple would of told me to install a vm i didnt even think of that but thanks to you that was the only work around

Apple is really forcing us to stick with how they want things and its frustrating.

For anyone else dont update your os if u dont need to, its a pain in the neck

Thanks for your help

Your welcome. What version of parallels do you have? Apparently Parallels Desktop 12 has fixed this issue. Apparently to get retina resolution you have to set it to "Best for Retina display" in the graphics area of the VM's individual parallels settings, and if you want the full resolution (so you want to drop scaling and have everything be small) you have to select "more space" in the same area.

Here is a link to an article with graphics. This may be what you already tried, but I wasn't sure from your reply, so I thought I would send it.
https://apple.stackexchange.com/que...n-in-macos-guest-in-parallels-desktop-for-mac

 

[JOSmith99]

Your welcome. What version of parallels do you have? Apparently Parallels Desktop 12 has fixed this issue. Apparently to get retina resolution you have to set it to "Best for Retina display" in the graphics area of the VM's individual parallels settings, and if you want the full resolution (so you want to drop scaling and have everything be small) you have to select "more space" in the same area.

Here is a link to an article with graphics. This may be what you already tried, but I wasn't sure from your reply, so I thought I would send it.
https://apple.stackexchange.com/que...n-in-macos-guest-in-parallels-desktop-for-mac

In parallels 12, it appears that you have to physically resize the window to change the resolution. Have you tried putting the window in fullscreen mode? That worked for me with a Yosemite VM.

 

[kissymac7]

In parallels 12, it appears that you have to physically resize the window to change the resolution. Have you tried putting the window in fullscreen mode? That worked for me with a Yosemite VM.

Hi actually I did that as well. I even put in full screen mode but the pixels still didnt show retina
Its very odd because like I stated on my 15 inch rmb its retina in parellels but than again its windows 10 installed on that vm

I will play with some more and see what I could be doing wrong

 

[JOSmith99]

Hi actually I did that as well. I even put in full screen mode but the pixels still didnt show retina
Its very odd because like I stated on my 15 inch rmb its retina in parellels but than again its windows 10 installed on that vm

I will play with some more and see what I could be doing wrong

According to my reSearch, you must have at least parallels desktop version 12 to use retina resolution.
You could try contacting parallels support via their website. I was able to get on a chat using Twitter, which was then switched over to email.

 

[JOSmith99]

Hi actually I did that as well. I even put in full screen mode but the pixels still didnt show retina
Its very odd because like I stated on my 15 inch rmb its retina in parellels but than again its windows 10 installed on that vm

I will play with some more and see what I could be doing wrong

Did you install parallels tools in the VM (if not, there should be a yellow triangle with an exclamation point in the top bar of the VM window). I believe that is required for retina resolution, and in my VM with Yosemite it did not do so automatically like it did in windows.

 

[Mac Hammer Fan]

fedkor, if I were you I would do this.
Erase the APFS partition and bring it back to HFS+ with a Sierra USB stick or Sierra recovery. (If you don't have a backup, backup your files first.) Then copy a Carbon Copy Clone Yosemite backup if you have one from an external disk to the internal drive. If you don't have that ask a friend to make a Yosemite install USB stick and install 10.10.5. However it will much time to restore all your files. Perhaps you have a Time machine Backup?

 

[mikefix]

I just had to install Yosemite onto a 2015 MacBook Pro 12,1

I used the recovery tools (command r) at boot

using Disk Tools I erased the disk to APFS

Rebooted, into recovery tools

using Disk Tools I erased the disk to HFS+

Rebooted, into recovery tools

I was then given the option to reinstall OS X Yosemite

Your milage may vary.

 

[JOSmith99]

I just had to install Yosemite onto a 2015 MacBook Pro 12,1

I used the recovery tools (command r) at boot

using Disk Tools I erased the disk to APFS

Rebooted, into recovery tools

using Disk Tools I erased the disk to HFS+

Rebooted, into recovery tools

I was then given the option to reinstall OS X Yosemite

Your milage may vary.

The reason for this is that when you erased the disk the first time it would have also erased the recovery partition, so the second time you are booting from the ORIGINAL internet recovery, which allows you to install the version of OSX that originally came on your Mac which in the case of the 2015 MacBook Pro is OSX Yosemite.

 

[mikefix]

The reason for this is that when you erased the disk the first time it would have also erased the recovery partition, so the second time you are booting from the ORIGINAL internet recovery, which allows you to install the version of OSX that originally came on your Mac which in the case of the 2015 MacBook Pro is OSX Yosemite.

I probably should have included that I was trying to get to Yosemite on purpose due to instability issues with a piece of software crashing on every operating system since. I posted this so if anyone else needs to downgrade to Yosemite, they can try this method.