{"id":313217,"date":"2026-02-27T15:31:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T15:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/313217\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T15:31:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T15:31:09","slug":"how-to-downgrade-from-macos-26-tahoe-on-a-new-mac","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/313217\/","title":{"rendered":"How to downgrade from macOS 26 Tahoe on a new Mac"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you\u2019re downloading the installer from within macOS Tahoe, you\u2019ll see a pop-up when the download completes, telling you that the installer can\u2019t be run from within that version of macOS. Since we\u2019ll be running it off of its own USB stick, you can safely ignore this message.<\/p>\n<p>  <a data-pswp-width=\"1980\" data-pswp-height=\"1400\" data-cropped=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/disk-utility-tahoe-01.jpeg\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"cursor-zoom-in\" data-pswp- rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><br \/>\n    <img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"724\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/disk-utility-tahoe-01-1024x724.jpeg\" class=\"ars-gallery-image\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" aria-labelledby=\"caption-2142155\"  \/><br \/>\n  <\/a><\/p>\n<p>      Settings for formatting your USB disk to get it ready for a macOS installer.<\/p>\n<p>\n                      Andrew Cunningham\n                  <\/p>\n<p>\n              Settings for formatting your USB disk to get it ready for a macOS installer.<\/p>\n<p>                      Andrew Cunningham<\/p>\n<p>  <a data-pswp-width=\"2500\" data-pswp-height=\"1544\" data-cropped=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/disk-utility-partition.jpeg\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"cursor-zoom-in\" data-pswp- rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><br \/>\n    <img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"632\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/disk-utility-partition-1024x632.jpeg\" class=\"ars-gallery-image\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" aria-labelledby=\"caption-2142158\"  \/><br \/>\n  <\/a><\/p>\n<p>      A 64GB disk is large enough to hold two or three macOS installers at once.<\/p>\n<p>\n                      Andrew Cunningham\n                  <\/p>\n<p>\n              A 64GB disk is large enough to hold two or three macOS installers at once.<\/p>\n<p>                      Andrew Cunningham<\/p>\n<p>\n              Settings for formatting your USB disk to get it ready for a macOS installer.<\/p>\n<p>                      Andrew Cunningham<\/p>\n<p>\n              A 64GB disk is large enough to hold two or three macOS installers at once.<\/p>\n<p>                      Andrew Cunningham<\/p>\n<p>While the installer is downloading, install and prepare your USB drive. Open Disk Utility, click the View button, and select \u201cshow all devices.\u201d Click the root of your USB drive under the \u201cexternal\u201d header in the left sidebar, and click the Erase button in the upper-right control area.<\/p>\n<p>Change the disk\u2019s name to whatever you want\u2014I use \u201cMyVolume\u201d so I don\u2019t have to change Apple\u2019s sample terminal commands when copying the installer files\u2014and make sure the Format is set to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and the Scheme is set to GUID Partition Map. (That\u2019s not an error; the macOS installer still wants an HFS+ filesystem rather than APFS.)<\/p>\n<p>The handy thing is that if you have a larger USB drive, you can create installers for multiple macOS versions by partitioning the disk with the Partition button. A 64GB drive split into three ~21GB partitions could boot Tahoe, Sequoia, and another past or future macOS version; I just have it split into two volumes so I can boot Sequoia and Tahoe installers from the same drive.<\/p>\n<p>            <a class=\"cursor-zoom-in\" data-pswp-width=\"1972\" data-pswp-height=\"1236\" data-cropped=\"false\" href=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/macos-recovery-drive.jpeg\" target=\"_blank\" data-pswp-><br \/>\n              <img width=\"1972\" height=\"1236\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/macos-recovery-drive.jpeg\" class=\"fullwidth full\" alt=\"\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\"  \/><br \/>\n            <\/a><\/p>\n<p>              Running the Terminal command to create our macOS 15 Sequoia boot drive.<\/p>\n<p>\n                  Credit:<br \/>\n                                      Andrew Cunningham\n                                  <\/p>\n<p>\n      Running the Terminal command to create our macOS 15 Sequoia boot drive.<\/p>\n<p>          Credit:<\/p>\n<p>          Andrew Cunningham<\/p>\n<p>Once the Sequoia installer is in your Applications folder, run a Terminal command to copy the installer files. Apple has commands for each version of macOS on <a href=\"https:\/\/support.apple.com\/en-us\/101578\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">this page<\/a>. Use this one for Sequoia:<\/p>\n<p>sudo \/Applications\/Install\\ macOS\\ Sequoia.app\/Contents\/Resources\/createinstallmedia &#8211;volume \/Volumes\/MyVolume<\/p>\n<p>If you named the USB drive something other than MyVolume when you formatted it, change the name in the command as well. Note that names with spaces require a backslash before each space.<\/p>\n<p>The Terminal will prompt you for your password and ask you to type Y to confirm. It will then reformat the drive and copy the files over. The time this takes will vary depending on the speed of the USB drive you\u2019re using, but for most USB 3 drives, it should only take a few minutes to create the installer. When the Terminal command is done running, leave the disk inserted and shut down your Mac.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you\u2019re downloading the installer from within macOS Tahoe, you\u2019ll see a pop-up when the download completes, telling&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[85,46,125],"class_list":{"0":"post-313217","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}