Apple's MacOS Sierra aka MacOS 10.12, which should now be available to a vast majority of Apple loyalists, cannot be downgraded to El Capitan by booting into the Recovery Mode. To do this, you need to completely remove the newer OS and then clean-install El Capitan. If you think that for whatever reason your Mac works best with El Capitan, then follow a simple guide given below to go back to the older Apple Mac OS.
How to downgrade to El Capitan from MacOS Sierra through a clean deletion of the new OS
Before proceeding, do remember that International Business Times, India will not be held responsible for any damage to device caused during downgrading or if limited functionality is encountered post downgrade.
Step 1: Take back-ups of all the files that you think are important and which are currently present within MacOS Sierra.
Step 2: Go to the Apple App Store and obtain the OS X El Capitan Installer tool and download it.
Step 3: Post download of the El Capitan installer tool, you should observe a new window consisting of a message indicating that you are using a new Mac OS X. At this point in time, close this window since you will not be able to install OS X El Capitan over MacOS Sierra.
Step 4: Have a hard drive handy and prepare a bootable installer here. Ensure that this hard drive has at least 8GB of free space. Also make sure that this drive is formatted with GUID Partition Table. After these processes, select a name for this drive.
Step 5: Use the createinstallmedia method for creating a bootable installer. To do this, check out the below ways:
- Physically interface the hard drive (as explained above) to your Apple Mac device.
- Transfer the El Capitan installer into the main Application folder.
- Then, open up a new Terminal and key in this command: sudo /Applications/Install OS X El Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install OS X El Capitan.app --nointeraction.
- The terminal shows execution of this command, and a Done at the end indicates the successful completion of making your hard-drive bootable with El Capitan installer.
Step 6: After you complete the above process, you should delete MacOS Sierra before you can install El Capitan from the bootable installer.
Step 7: Finally, after removing MacOS Sierra, install clean install El Capitan as follows:
- After you use the Disk Utility to wipe-out MacOS Sierra, close the utility and choose Install OS X.
- Follow simple on-screen installation to successfully install El Capitan.
- Use your Time Machine to restore all backed-up files.
[Source: Macworld].
