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Ask HN: How do you install not the latest iOS version?

by laurentlassalle on 1/8/23, 9:51 PM with 45 comments

• by drewbitt on 1/8/23, 10:12 PM

  You cannot on real hardware; Apple stops signing old OSes and there’s nothing you can do. Even recent jailbreaks haven’t gotten around this. You can extend the signing period a bit by using delayOTA https://dhinakg.github.io/delayed-otas.html

• by TazeTSchnitzel on 1/8/23, 10:45 PM

  One way to work around Apple forcing you to upgrade to the latest version is to buy older devices that are no longer supported. The iPhone 7 for example can't be upgraded past iOS 15.

  Unfortunately for this strategy, Apple tend to drop support for several devices at once, so there's no device whose final version is iOS 14, for example. With that said, if you're desperate, you could get new-in-box old devices, assuming those devices can still be activated (not all can).

• by saagarjha on 1/8/23, 11:30 PM

  That’s the neat part, you don’t.

  (Memes aside, keep old devices around and never update them. And while not useful to you something like Corellium can be useful to check things in a pinch.)

• by mensetmanusman on 1/8/23, 10:10 PM

  “One does not _simply_ not install the latest iOS” -Boromir

  Biggest flaw of iOS in my experience, I have lost over $1000 in apps not operable due to iOS updates. The apps work fine on my older iOS version devices which have since died due to battery issues.

• by scarface74 on 1/9/23, 12:41 AM

  For reference, 90% of iOS users are on at least 15.5

  https://gs.statcounter.com/ios-version-market-share/all/unit...

  How many users are actually on iOS 14 since every device that can run iOS 14 can run iOS 15?

• by xuki on 1/8/23, 11:51 PM

  I know it’s not directly relevant, but maybe consider dropping iOs 14. All devices that can run iOS 14 can also run iOS 15, and it’s much easier to find devices that run iOS 15 to test with. Any iPhone 6s, SE or 7 will do.

• by teetertater on 1/8/23, 11:28 PM

  Impossible from ios13->14 if you haven’t downloaded blobs already, and 14 isn’t being signed.

  The best you can do at the moment is to jailbreak and use futurerestore to go to slightly lower ios 16 beta versions

• by secretsatan on 1/9/23, 2:07 PM

  Probably a bit late, but I think if you want to preserve an iOS version before updating, you have to back it up with the sync tool. At least that is how you do it when installing beta versions and want to rollback, if you don't have the backup, you're out of luck.

  the Simulator has improved a lot over recent years I've found. We couldn't use it for ages as accessing metal would cause it to crash, I noticed late last year this no longer happens, making it a viable solution for us again.

• by bakugo on 1/8/23, 11:51 PM

  You ask Apple for permission to do it because they are the owners of the device, not you. Their answer is no, and that's the end of that.

• by xkcd-sucks on 1/9/23, 3:46 AM

  You can get an old device, wait until it fills up with caches/logs/other opaque data that just can't be deleted for whatever reason, and updates will fail due to insufficient free space. Or just download a large file to the same effect probably

• by mobilio on 1/8/23, 10:33 PM

  Using few devices with old iOS.

  I'm currently running one device on 14.8.1, other on 15.X and third on latest.