Connect with us

Apple

How to Downgrade to iOS 8.3 from iOS 8.4

Published

on

iOS 8.4 was released today as expected, and with it comes the launch of Apple Music. However, if you’re having issues with the new update or just miss the company of iOS 8.3, here’s how to downgrade to iOS 8.3 from iOS 8.4.

With the release of iOS 8.4, many new performance improvements and bug fixes are making their way to your device, but the most important new feature of iOS 8.4 is the inclusion of Apple Music, which is the company’s own music streaming service that aims take a chunk out of the already-saturated market that’s dominated by Spotify and Pandora.

However, Apple aims to do things a bit differently by also launching a live radio station with real DJs called Beats 1, which will include music, interviews, etc. It’s an interesting concept that Apple thinks will win over users.

If you’re experiencing issues with the iOS 8.4 update, not all hope is lost, as you can downgrade back to iOS 8.3 fairly easily. However, Apple only provides a short window of time to do so (usually a week or so).

If you want to downgrade back to iOS 8.3, here’s how to do it.

UPDATE: Unfortunately, Apple has closed up iOS 8.3 and you can no longer downgrade to iOS 8.3 from iOS 8.4.

Back Up Your iPhone

Before you do absolutely anything, it’s always a good idea to back up your iPhone using iTunes. We have a great guide that takes you through the process of doing so, but you most likely know how it goes if you’re a long-time iPhone or iPad owner.

itunes-backup

By backing up your iPhone, you’re protecting yourself against any mishaps from occurring during the downgrading process. If any do occur, you can restore from the backup and try again with the downgrading process.

It’s a good idea anyway to back up your device every now and then, so that if something bad happened to your iPhone or iPad, you won’t lose any of your apps and settings. You’ll thank yourself later for sure.

Downgrading to iOS 8.3

The first thing you’ll want to do is head over to this website and download the iOS 8.3 install file for your specific iOS device. These files can be a couple of gigabytes in size, so they may take a little bit of time to download, so be aware of that when you’re doing this.

Screen Shot 2015-06-29 at 3.19.04 PM

Once the install file for iOS 8.3 is downloaded to your computer, the next step is to open up iTunes and plug in your iPhone or iPad into your computer.

Go to your device’s summary page in iTunes and hold down the Option/Alt key on your keyboard (or Shift if you’re on Windows) and click on Restore iPhone in iTunes as you do so. This will bring up the file explorer where you’ll navigate to the iOS 8.3 install file that you downloaded and open it.

Screen Shot 2015-06-29 at 4.20.54 PM

Your iPhone will begin to restore back to iOS 8.3. This process may take a few minutes so it’s a good idea to sit back and relax while the process runs along.

After it’s finished, you’ll be left with a clean install of iOS 8.3 on your iPhone, but if you want to restore all of your apps and settings, go back into iTunes with your device plugged in and click Restore Backup on your device’s summary page.

At that point, you’ll now be back to where you were before you upgraded to iOS 8.4. You’ll have all of your apps and settings and such, but instead of being on iOS 8.4, you’ll now be back to running iOS 8.3.

Again, iOS 8.4 comes with some performance improvements that should make the iOS experience even better than iOS 8.3, including better battery life. However, if you’re having issues with the latest version of iOS 8.4 or you’d rather just not have the new Apple Music service on your device at all, downgrading back down to iOS 8.3 is the best option, and as you can see, the process is pretty easy.

iOS 8.4 Jailbreak Status

Perhaps one of the biggest things that jailbreakers are going to be looking for with iOS 8.4 is whether or not it’s jailbreakable yet. iOS 8.4 is out and available to the public, but we’d suggest holding off updating to iOS 8.4 if you’re already jailbroken on iOS 8.3.

iOS-8-Cydia-tweaks

It’s been claimed in the recent past that the betas to iOS 8.4 were jailbroken at one point, and while that seems like a good sign, we’re still being careful as to whether or not the final version of iOS 8.4 is good to go.

In any case, if iOS 8.4 is jailbreakable, the TaiG dev team will most likely issue an update to their jailbreak tool to make it work with iOS 8.4. We’ll update GottaBeMobile.com with more information when it arrives, but in the meantime it’s a good idea to stay away from updating to iOS 8.4 if you plan on jailbreaking until we hear an official word.

What’s New in iOS 8.4

Apple Music Streaming

Apple Music Streaming

The new Apple Music app includes the new Apple Music streaming service designed to take on Spotify, Pandora and other services. The iOS 8.4 update enables this new app and includes a free three-month trial of the Apple Music service.

With Apple Music you can pay $9.99 a month for an individual or $14.99 a month for a family of up to six members and enjoy full albums on demand and save music for offline playback.

Apple Music uses your musical tastes to pick new music that you might enjoy listening to in a new For You section of the music app that will help you find new music to listen to. The video above shows how this works.

This new app replaces the Music app from iOS 8 and earlier. Apple is not adding another app you cannot install from the iPhone or iPad, just updating one that is already on your device.

30 Comments

30 Comments

  1. Kenton

    07/01/2015 at 7:51 am

    For me, the link is broken that takes you to the 8.3 installs

  2. Zeke

    07/01/2015 at 10:43 pm

    I can’t connect my iPhone to iTunes with 8.4. If I could I wouldn’t want to downgrade. That’s my only problem I just want my music back.

  3. Ruairi

    07/02/2015 at 8:50 am

    The bad news is that whilst it is possible to downgrade the iOS from 8.4 to 8.3, it is not possible to then restore a backup made when your phone had 8.4 installed.

    When you try, iTunes says:
    “Can’t restore this backup because the OS on this device is too old.”
    So you then need to re-upgrade to 8.4 in order to restore all your phone’s content.

    Looks like I’m stuck with an iOS that rinses the battery like never before and a very buggy, counter-intuitive and messy Music app… boo Apple, big fat booooooooooooooo!!

    • Nicole

      07/02/2015 at 9:04 am

      I had the exact same happen to me. I’ve spent hours for nothing. All I wanted back was my normal music library this Apple Music thing is dreadful and complicated. I just want the simplistic layout back. Apple Music is basically just an upgraded version of iTunes so they should’ve fused them together instead of f***ing up the library.

      • boi

        07/03/2015 at 1:01 pm

        u still still find your song inside the music player
        u go music go library all your song wil be there

    • Alonso N.

      07/04/2015 at 8:42 am

      Its pretty easy to solve the “Can’t restore this backup because the OS on this device is too old” error, you just need modify the info.plist file, inside the backup folder, open it with any text editor and then find the version number, and just change it to the previous number and voila, error fixed. here is the detailed video:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2gN5SyjDcY
      Postdate:
      Downgrade until 8.3 is still signed, personally i was having battery drain after 8.4 upgrade

  4. ophelia1991

    07/02/2015 at 12:44 pm

    I literally hate Apple Music so much!!!
    Lost all my music that i had on before i updated. Went through all these steps to find out i also couldn restore backup data because the system is too old!!!

    im absolutley furious, Switching back to android ASAP!!

  5. culture_420

    07/02/2015 at 12:59 pm

    I am getting now getting No Service on my phone since upgrading. Time to downgrade and see if it works…..

    • culture_420

      07/02/2015 at 1:31 pm

      It’s working now that I have downgraded back to 8.3.. Guess I’ll be waiting for a while to upgrade again…

  6. Sigrid

    07/02/2015 at 3:53 pm

    Since I upgraded to ios 8.4 – Messages app is frozen. I can see that messages are coming in because there is a number on the icon of the messages app. when I open it – the screen is blank!

  7. Daniel Nguyen

    07/03/2015 at 9:46 am

    Just pray if I can go back to iOS 8.3. I hate Apple that i does not allow us to disable some features…

  8. Daniel Nguyen

    07/03/2015 at 9:55 am

    Aloha, God blesses me, finally my phone comes back to 8.3
    Myhomepage: https://tnu.edu.vn/

  9. M

    07/03/2015 at 9:48 pm

    What a God send!!!! I use my iPhone & iPad to meander around my home with Music, sharing my tunes. Crap, gone! Your instructions are very clear. Start to finish is about 2 hours for my iPhone 5S. Thank God I did a backup!!!!!!

  10. samacal1956

    07/04/2015 at 2:34 am

    I could not navigate to the file where the 8.3 downgrade was downloaded. I held Shift and clicked “Restore iPhone” and I got the file explorer but I could not find where the downgrade was located.

  11. Andy

    07/04/2015 at 9:04 am

    I’m glad I never upgraded to 8 from 7.whatever… does everything I need it to, wouldn’t use any pf the “upgraded” gimmicks anyway, just more apple apps to push off to the last screen I never access. Upgrade headaches have been standard operating procedure since the beginning of personal computers… but people never learn and can’t wait to be the first ones to install and have headaches…

  12. ADChacon

    07/04/2015 at 10:36 am

    Sadly, this did not work for me. The last backup was made under iOS 8,4 and iTunes will not load the backup to iOS 8.3, since it is an earlier version of the firmware. iTune was nice enough to remove the backup of the phone so that the information is no longer available. Total lossage of contact information and the like. YMMV, but there seem to be significant risks associated with doing something Apple does not want you to do.

    • Alonso N.

      07/04/2015 at 5:22 pm

      Or you could read the previous comments;

      “Its pretty easy to solve the “Can’t restore this backup because the OS on this device is too old” error, you just need modify the info.plist file, inside the backup folder, open it with any text editor and then find the version number, and just change it to the previous number and voila, error fixed. here is the detailed video:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2gN5SyjDcY
      Postdate:
      Downgrade until 8.3 is still signed, personally i was having battery drain after 8.4 upgrade

  13. Ryan

    07/04/2015 at 6:53 pm

    Thank you for the info….works for me… reinstalling some apps now… got my music back and my home sharing… thank you again… I did download the wrong ipsw at first but iTunes lets you know right away that it’s the wrong or incompatible version… give it time…took about an hour round trip (so to say) but I’m happy again…

  14. Kurt Alke

    07/05/2015 at 3:31 am

    Apple Music is a true mess!!!
    Complicatet to handle
    Useles in the car

    Was a big fan of iphone since the first version, but now, as things are going worse, i think of changing to android!

  15. Gabriel

    07/05/2015 at 9:04 am

    This really screwed me up! Why would you publish this article if it doesn’t even work! I wasted so much time and I might have lost all of my data…

  16. Harry

    07/05/2015 at 2:25 pm

    If you downloaded the “restore 8.3” file via Windows you may need to rename the downloaded file from a “.ZIP” to “.IPSW” before the restore. Just hope you backed up your iPhone while still on 8.3!

  17. Howard

    07/06/2015 at 7:31 am

    I can downgrade to 8.3 but I found that the Podcast app doesn’t work anymore after downgrade. Anyone know how to fix it?

  18. Wendy S.

    07/11/2015 at 12:40 pm

    does this apply to the Ipod touch also? I get as far as the ITunes back up with shift key and although I can see the zipped file, it won’t open in ITunes. I have tried unzipping it but that didn’t work either. HELP!

  19. Carla

    07/11/2015 at 3:24 pm

    I downloaded the 8.3 file and did exactly what the article said, navigated to it and attempted to install. After about 10 seconds I got an error and it said the update could not be completed and I was FORCED to restore through iTunes (back to 8.4 of course). The I had to re0install all my apps and everything. a MAJOR pain in the rear!!!

    My advice is to just try and wait it out and hope they release an update to fix the problem for 8.4. If you haven’t upgraded to 8.4 yet, DON’T!! Wait for an upgrade or two to come along before doing so. I usually do that with most major updates and like a fool I updated to 8.4 almost as soon as it came out. Big mistake. I guess we are the guinea pigs for Apple..

  20. Mandy

    07/11/2015 at 9:05 pm

    Hate that I can’t play my music as before. How do I repeat a song. Please help me. Really don’t like this upgrade at all.

  21. Denny tremblay

    07/13/2015 at 6:16 pm

    R bug App Store+bug de chargement qui gelé+bug de music MAJ

  22. Ian Frost

    07/26/2015 at 12:26 pm

    Upgraded from 8.3 to 8.4 and the phones stopped working all together… was getting it turning itself off after a very short time, blue screen, and now it’s died completely… can’t get an appointment at the Genius Bar until next week, so I’m left without a phone which is critical for my work for the next week… absolutely fuming!!

  23. PO!

    07/29/2015 at 6:45 pm

    Apple is like the rest of the Liberal world. FUBAR. As soon as I find a new phone and computer I am leaving apple for good. 8.4 is the straw!

  24. PO!

    07/29/2015 at 6:48 pm

    Apple is a bunch of Twerps!

  25. J

    08/19/2015 at 3:42 pm

    Upgraded to 8.4 – WiFi is screwed; battery drains super fast; txt messages are coming super late; my iphone is really slow. F-U very much Apple

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.