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honeycombz

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 6, 2013
592
155
Hey, I updated to a security update that broke something for me and I would like to go back to the previous security update using recovery mode but am unclear if I command + r and reinstall Mac OS if that will just update to the most current version of the OS with including the security update that I don't want. Is there a way to use recovery mode to reinstall the OS (Catalina) non destructively without any security updates so I can manually update to an older version or is this not possible?
 
If you're using older macOS versions (probably up to 10.14), there's a way to restore the system from Time Machine. It would allow you to restore the mac to a certain date while restoring macOS verion, updates and files in that backup.
On newer macOS versions this feature doesn't work anymore, so now we have Migration Assistant that can restore files and settings but not the entire system from the backup.
So, to answer your question, it doesn't look like there's a way to go back and revert system changes on new macOS versions without affecting your data
 
Seems to me that unless you have some kind of a backup (time machine, CarbonCopyCloner, SuperDuper), and the backup HAS NOT been updated to include the security update, that you could restore from the backup.

BUT... otherwise, may be impossible.

If you boot to INTERNET recovery (command-OPTION-R), I believe Apple's servers are going to offer you Catalina with all the latest updates.

So, doing that may not produce the results you want.

One more thing:
Check your conversations...
 
Is there any way to tell which security patch level my recovery partition contains/will install? I think the build number increments for each security update (but not the minor dot release number). It’s unclear how to figure this out before doing a reinstall from recovery.

See table at the bottom of:

 
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