I switched to OS X Lion, but my Mac hasn’t felt well since. How can I return to Snow Leopard?
Assuming you have a good Time Machine backup, retreating from OS X Lion is easy. Restart your Mac, then immediately hold down the Option key. Choose Recovery HD and press Enter to start up in Lion’s new Recovery Mode. Select the first choice, “Restore From Time Machine Backup,” browse to a pre-Lion backup, and the snow cat will be back in no time. You can also restore everything from a non–Time Machine backup using Disk Utility.
OS X Lion users should boot into Recovery Mode first when downgrading.
As long as your Mac didn’t ship with OS X Lion, you have a third option: Reformat your hard drive, do a clean install of Snow Leopard from the original installer disc (which Apple still sells for $29), and either start over or restore your User folder from a pre-Lion backup. Insert your installer disc, restart while holding down the C key, and open Utilities > Disk Utility. Select your hard drive from the sidebar and click the Erase tab. Choose “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” from the Format pulldown, click the Erase button, and say goodbye to Lion—and everything else on your drive.
Restoring from a Time Machine backup is one of three ways to return to Snow Leopard.
After Snow Leopard installs, restart when prompted and run Software Update to get the most recent version (currently 10.6.8), then copy your Home folder from a backup. Make sure you have installers handy for your apps, System Preference panes, or other third-party software—you’ll need to reinstall them again.
sjsu2
February 21, 2012 at 9:35pm
I just bought a MacBook Pro refurb. It is the February 2011 edition and had Lion installed. I ordered snow leopard from the apple store, and they sent me the 10.6.3 edition which did not work. I called support and asked for the original snow leopard startup disk for that model (10.6.6) and they shipped it to me no charge, and refunded my purchase of snow leopard. So it is possible to install snow leopard, if your laptop was released before July 2011.
Carden2000
October 10, 2011 at 7:51pm
Yes, if it comes from apple with lion OS on it there is no turning back. I made 3 calls to apple about wanting to switch my new Mac book pro back to snow leopard. What they said is .... once it leaves the factory the firmware has been updated And it can no longer be brought backwards. I tried it myself it would not work. I ended up shipping it back and getting my money back!
Qaanol
October 03, 2011 at 8:44am
The line reading “As long as your Mac didn’t ship with OS X Lion” in the article makes me wonder. Is there something preventing the clean-wipe-and-install-from-disc method from working correctly to put Snow Leopard on a new Mac that shipped with Lion?
