How To Go Back On Mac

If you use a Mac laptop to surf, you’ve probably noticed that lightly swiping two fingers left or right on the trackpad causes your web browser to go forward and back a page. For some, this is a great. For others, it happens accidentally more often than it happens on purpose, which can be annoying.

Just like most of us, you’ve probably jumped on the Sierra bandwagon and upgraded expecting cool features and a boost in performance. But the new macOS has it’s bugs and troubles: some apps and hardware pieces are incompatible with it just yet, and some features are off-putting rather than appealing.

In any case, you don’t have to endure Sierra if for whatever reason you don’t feel like it at this point. Follow our guide on how to downgrade macOS Sierra and familiar OS X and wait for another update (or don’t).

Back up your data. First, back up everything. Your Mac probably contains your personal data and documents that you don’t want to lose. So, to keep those alive after the downgrade, you need to back up your data. You can use Google Drive, iCloud Drive, or any other cloud you prefer. After the backup is done, you can move on to the next step.
How to Downgrade to High Sierra from macOS Catalina Before process back up all data from USB flash and Mac(time machine and data file). Back up your applicat.

How to remove macOS Sierra and go back to OS X 10.11

IMPORTANT: Do not proceed before you have this guide opened on some other device or printed out! If you want to reinstall El Capitan to the very Mac you’re reading this on right now, please make sure to have this page opened anywhere else or even print out the instructions. We’ve prepared a full tutorial on how to remove macOS Sierra from your Mac and revert back to El Capitan OS.

Step 1: Keep your files backed up

First, let’s figure out how to reinstall macOS without losing data. While you downgrade your Mac, it will be cleansed from the files you’ve worked on since you’ve installed Sierra. If you still need them, you should back them up.

To begin with, make sure you’re backing up the files you actually need, not some old trashy stuff that you’d be better off without. You can make use of a Mac cleaner to get rid of the files you no longer need. An app like CleanMyMac X is a good fit for the job. After you download and install it, look in the left-hand menu for the Large & Old files tab. Run the scan to find stuff on your Mac you might want to get rid of quickly. Now you can move the rest of them to an external drive or cloud storage, like DropBox or iCloud.

Also, it’s vital to have a Time Machine backup for all your files before you proceed. This is a general Mac backup and you can restore all your files by the end of the reinstallation process. You can find it in Settings -> Time Machine.

Step 2: Make an OS X El Capitan installer into a bootable drive

Before you proceed directly to macOS downgrade, you’ll need OS X El Capitan installer ready for launch. For this purpose you’ll need a bootable flash drive (USB) with El Capitan on it. When you create it, you can then erase the operation system you’ve got now (Sierra) and install El Capitan, but it must be specifically a bootable installer on drive, not just an file on the USB stick. Otherwise you won’t be able to choose it for installation. No worries, it’s not too hard to create, just stick to the steps below:

Find an external drive (a thumb drive will do) with at least 8GB of storage space.
Download El Capitan installer file (Install El Capitan.app) from the App Store and put it into the Applications folder.
Open Terminal and paste this into Terminal window:
sudo /Applications/Install OS X El Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install OS X El Capitan.app --nointeraction
Enter admin password when asked.

Wait for about half an hour till it’s ready. In the end, you will see: Copy Complete. And finally, Done. This means you’re all set.

Step 3: Erase macOS Sierra out of your sight

Once your bootable installer is ready to roll, time to delete macOS Sierra. The following list shows you the easiest way to completely remove macOS Sierra from your Mac, so there is no coming back after you’ve gone all the way. Make sure you’ve kept all precautions, like you have the rest of this page on a separate device and your files are safely backed up or moved to the cloud storage.

Sure, you’re ready to move on? Then go.

Make sure you’ve got internet connection.
Restart Mac (Apple icon -> Restart).
Press and hold Command+R right after the startup until Mac makes that specific reboot noise.
Open Disk Utility, you can see it in the Utilities selector.
Click Continue.
You can see the list of disks, find your Startup Disk among them and choose it.
Find the Erase tab in the top. Name the file you want erased (for instance macOS Sierra).
Choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) from the list.
Hit Erase.

When the process of erasing Sierra is complete, you can open the main menu in the upper left corner and simply quit Disk Utility. You won’t need it anymore. Quitting will bring you back to the OS X Utilities selector and our reinstallation journey continues from there.

Step 4: Install OS X El Capitan back on your Mac

Finally, after you’ve erased something, you have to install something back. With the bootable drive it’s more than easy, just a couple of clicks. However, not as fast.

First, in your OS X Utilities selector, find and choose Reinstall OS X.
When you see El Capitan installation, just click continue and then click through the license agreement.
From then, follow the usual installation flow. Let it finish and let it reboot.

IMPORTANT: there is a possibility, that you’ll be able to download an earlier version of OS X, probably the one that was on your Mac when you bought it. In this case, finish the installation and then go to the Mac App Store to upgrade to El Capitan.

Step 5: Retrieve your files from El Capitan backup

As we mentioned before, a Time Machine backup is not exactly an option, it’s more of a necessity when it comes to getting your files back. Here’s how to do it: