How to downgrade from MacOS Ventura back to macOS Monterey

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Last week, I went over how to downgrade from iOS 16 Beta back to iOS 15. Now, I’ll go over how to do the same with MacOS.

As I said with the other article, Apple does not recommend this, and I’m writing this so you can have a reference incase you have to downgrade for a major reason.

Before starting, make sure you backup any important data (photos, documents, etc.) to an external device. Do not rely on your Time Machine backup (if you have one).

The easiest way to downgrade. is to completely wipe the Mac and then reinstall Monterey. If you’ve never done that before, Apple has made it fairly easy. Just follow the steps below.

Restart the Mac, and then do the following:
- For Apple Silicon Mac: immediately hold the Power button and continue holding until you see the boot options, choose “Options” and continue
- For Intel Mac: immediately hold down the Command + R keys and continue holding them until the Mac boots into Recovery Mode
Once the Mac is booted into Recovery mode, select “Disk Utility” from the options
Select the macOS Ventura drive and choose “Erase” from the options – remember, this will delete all data on the Mac completely and permanently
Choose the file system, typically this is “Apple File System (APFS)” for modern Macs, then click “Erase” to format the Mac THIS COMPLETELY ERASES ALL DATA ON THE MAC
Exit out of Disk Utility after the drive has erased
- For Apple Silicon Mac: restart the Mac and boot from a macOS Monterey installer USB drive by connecting the USB installer drive to the Mac, then holding the Power button, and selecting the macOS Monterey installer at the boot menu
- Choose “Reinstall macOS Monterey” on the Mac, and walk through the installation setup as usual
- Let macOS Monterey complete installing, when finished you’ll be greeted with the standard MacOS setup screen as if the Mac were brand new – Choose the set up the Mac as new option
- That’s it! Now you can restore those important documents and photos to the drive

* You may need to enable the option for external drive booting on the Mac with Apple Silicon and Mac with T2 chip if you’re unable to boot from an external USB drive.

Again, if you’re not comfortable with doing the above, then perhaps you should wait for the final version of MacOS Ventura to become available, which could be sometime this Fall.