How to rollback / revert from Tahoe to Sequoia?

[throwinrocks]

I wonder if a pinned post on this topic might be useful. I've installed Tahoe on my new 15" M4 MacBook Air, and apart from Tahoe being completely hideous, I've noticed significant text blur when scrolling in the system, websites, and documents. I know this is only a 60Hz screen, but it is significantly worse than Sequoia.

I use this machine as my work computer for an entirely text-based job, so I don't think I can stand this blurriness.

I'm vision impaired and feel drunk or dizzy if I stare at the screen too long so I try to leave a browser open.

 

[Compote]

Tahoe broke my ability to scroll on Chrome. It keeps freezing. It's got giant in-your-face notifications, the degeneracy is real, this is a ruined OS, when Sequoia was still good. Everything is ruined, everything is huge and round and blocky, the control center and app drawer don't make sense, there is a stupid button for stupid uneditable screen captures, etc.

 

[throwinrocks]

Tahoe broke my ability to scroll on Chrome. It keeps freezing. It's got giant in-your-face notifications, the degeneracy is real, this is a ruined OS, when Sequoia was still good. Everything is ruined, everything is huge and round and blocky, the control center and app drawer don't make sense, there is a stupid button for stupid uneditable screen captures, etc.

When I use Chrome I notice it flashes and I love how the Dock changes colors on its own.

 

[ibookemo]

I rolled back today - phew! Tahoe had an awful effect on my M4 Mac Pro, super jerky animation between Spaces and the Zoom app made the fans spin up like crazy. Nothing similar has ever appeared on Sequoia for me. I think I'll actually just skip Tahoe - I really think Sequoia looks a lot better design-wise.

 

[throwinrocks]

I rolled back today - phew! Tahoe had an awful effect on my M4 Mac Pro, super jerky animation between Spaces and the Zoom app made the fans spin up like crazy. Nothing similar has ever appeared on Sequoia for me. I think I'll actually just skip Tahoe - I really think Sequoia looks a lot better design-wise.

I think Apple screwed the pooch on this macOS. They need to QUIT trying to make Macs and MacBooks look and act like iPads and iPhones

 

[Compote]

I think Apple screwed the pooch on this macOS. They need to QUIT trying to make Macs and MacBooks look and act like iPads and iPhones

Then they should have stopped 3 years ago. I just don't understand why everything is round and translucent / unreadable. If only it were just the look of the OS but it's buggy as **** too. And I've tried the "phone app" : it just doesn't work.

 

[ibookemo]

Tahoe feels like a very early beta. Heck, I've ran many OS betas that are more smooth. Definitely not ready for prime time.

 

[throwinrocks]

Like I've been saying it reminds me of Windows Vista 🤣

 

[Mike Boreham]

As @ebika implied conventional advice, and the safe option is restore a back up made when the machine was last on Sequoia, but my experience is that this is not essential. When restoring from a Tahoe backup after reinstalling you may (not always happened) be warned that the backup was made on a later OS and advised to update, but there is an option to proceed anyway.

If you do proceed you will probably find that your Photos Library is no longer compatible as it has been updated to a later OS. You can get round this by deleting the incompatible Photos Lib and downloading a fresh one from iCloud. If you are not using iCloud you may be stuck and need a Sequoia backup, but you could try opening the Photos lib with ctrl+alt keys which launches the repair process. I haven’t tested this in Tahoe but it worked in previous OSes, also I have only done it with a iCloud lib. Similar may apply with Apple Mail. You may need to delete the account and create a new one and re-download your mail.

For reasons I dont need to go into I just tried rolling back to Sequoia by installing a dual boot Sequoia volume on the internal. When it came to migration I first tried to migrate from the Tahoe install, and got a firm NO, with no options:

Then I tried to migrate from a Time Machine backup of the Tahoe volume, expecting to be able to select a Sequoia back up from a week ago, but it only showed the latest backup and it wouldn't let me migrate from that. No message like above but no progress. Then I tried to migrate from a CCC backup of the Tahoe vol, and that has worked as normal. I will have the issues mentioned in the second paragraph, but I can deal with those.

Moral of the story use both Time Machine and CCC...you never know which will work. Migration from Time Machine has usually been my first choice but glad I make both.

 

[August West]

I rolled back on Tues and found it to be a less painful process than I feared it might be. This is the first time in 16 years of using macs that I had to do this. Make sure to have current TM backup. I was lazy so my TM was not very current (secondary MBA which doesn't have anything important on it) which lead to a bit more work but I did a manual B/U of my home directory to a USB drive and exported bookmarks/settings for my browsers, uBlock origin etc.

 

[Mike Boreham]

I will have the issues mentioned in the second paragraph, but I can deal with those.

A expected the Photos lib would not open with the usual incompatible OS message, but relaunching it with opt+cmd held down launched Photos repair and it repaired to Sequoia standard OK. Mail was more difficult. I deleted all the Mail related prefs files I could find and also the ~/Libary/Mail folder and then when launched it started re-downloading my mail.

 

[thebart]

This stuff looks way too complicated

In Windows, you can uninstall an OS upgrade like you do any app. Go into add/remove programs and uninstall Windows 11 to go back to 10, for example. And it's just done automatically. You don't need to have a dedicated drive like with time machine

If, after some time, you decide you like the upgrade, you can uninstall the uninstall data to free up space

Mac should copy this.

Also, system restore points that are created automatically and/or on demand. They're like game saves that let you put the system back to a previous state. Yes there's TM but you don't need a dedicated drive or boot into system recovery or whatever

 

[M4th]

This stuff looks way too complicated

In Windows, you can uninstall an OS upgrade like you do any app. Go into add/remove programs and uninstall Windows 11 to go back to 10, for example. And it's just done automatically. You don't need to have a dedicated drive like with time machine

If, after some time, you decide you like the upgrade, you can uninstall the uninstall data to free up space

Mac should copy this.

Also, system restore points that are created automatically and/or on demand. They're like game saves that let you put the system back to a previous state. Yes there's TM but you don't need a dedicated drive or boot into system recovery or whatever

Whoever is really all that unhappy with Tahoe will eventually figure it out, or find someone to help them.

I agree though, Apple could probably make it more simple but for whatever reason chooses not to do so.

 

[Sniper08]

For anyone who wants compact tabs back in Sequoia and Tahoe, you can use Safari 18.6. I can confirm it works on Tahoe Dev Beta 26.1 and it's glorious.

The link is direct from Apple's servers, and it can be found on Mr Macintosh's website under 'Safari for macOS Sonoma Installer Download' and version 18.6 is going to be the last version with compact tabs: https://mrmacintosh.com/macos-safari-full-installer-database-download-directly-from-apple/

Note: When it comes to installers it's always better to go directly to the website and download it yourself

For anyone who's too lazy, here is the link: https://swcdn.apple.com/content/dow...dcebzsfju4kp761uzgl7/Safari18.6SonomaAuto.pkg

 

[avkills]

This is why I will never use Time Machine for backups. I do it the old fashioned way and manually copy the stuff from my home folder that I need to backup to a drive. Most everything else I need is either Dropbox or synced via my Apple ID.

 

[gilby101]

Most everything else I need is either Dropbox or synced via my Apple ID.

Sync not backup.

I do it the old fashioned way

Which is fine if you don't want easy system recovery (or backup history) which is a strength of TM. Your security profile, your choice.

 

[businessnumbersmoneypeopl]

Like I've been saying it reminds me of Windows Vista 🤣

I just opened a Finder window where Tahoe won't let me open any of the files. 🥲 No matter how much I click either Word or PDF files (the folder has both), nothing happens. The same result by right-clicking and selecting open from the menu. Managing to mess up Finder is quite an achievement for a new OS! Never seen anything like this before (on top of other bugs and "features")

 

[ascender]

Argh... just came here to hopefully see a nice quick answer to downgrading but nope.

This OS is a shambles, I can't remember a new macOS version being this unreliable with so many issues affecting core apps.