How to Downgrade from iOS 9 to iOS 6

Or technically from iOS 9.3.5/9.3.6 to iOS 6.0–9.3.5.
Written: 2025-01-18 · Last Updated: Never

It's completely possible to effectively downgrade any 32-bit iDevice from iOS 9 to iOS 6, provided you've got some technical confidence.

This all started because I had this horrid 5th generation iPod touch (incidentally my first iDevice) that ran its latest release, iOS 9.3.5. It ran so horribly that it would last a solid 20 seconds (I'm not kidding) from charger unplug to completely dead flat just sitting on the iOS 9 homescreen. Not only that, but as is the case with basically every Apple product ever, our good friend Planned Obsolescence meant that this thing running it's ultimate release OS was slow as hell.

And so I got the idea that, Hey, iPhone 4 was good on iOS 6 but terrible on 7—why don't I try a little bit of Golden Age iOS to try and bring a little life back into this thing? And so it began.


THIS PROCEDURE INVOLVES JAILBREAKING AND FLASHING YOUR DEVICE

This process will wipe your device for certain. Don't do this on a device with important data or on a device that you depend on for anything. You will lose everything.

Additionally, improper following of instructions may soft-brick and boot-loop your device. However, you can always remedy this by rebooting the device into Recovery Mode and re-flashing iOS 9.3.5 in iTunes.


Procedure

You will need:

Optionally, if the internet on your iDevice is notably worse than on your computer:


Stage 1: The iOS 9 Stuff

First, we'll need to jailbreak iOS 9 then downgrade it to the last release of iOS 8.4.1. We will jailbreak iOS 9.3.5/9.3.6 with Phoenixpwn, a semi-untethered jailbreak, meaning you don't need to have a computer connected for it to stay jailbroken on reboot, but you do need to manually re-"kickstart" the jailbreak every time you reboot the device. For this tutorial, we only really need to be in iOS 9 for one power cycle, so re-kickstarting isn't needed.

  1. Start booted into Windows or macOS first.
    1. Connect the iDevice to your computer and make sure to hit Trust in iOS.
    2. Open Sideloadly and click the big "IPA" button to select the Phoenixpwn IPA file. Enter in your Apple ID e-mail address you wish to use. You are allowed 11 unique app IDs to sign a week; we'll only use two for the two jailbreak apps in this tutorial.
    3. Hit Start, it'll ask for the password and begin the process of signing and sideloading the app. A sideloaded app will remain valid for 7 days.
    Once sideloaded, the app will be available on your home screen immediately, but don't launch it yet!
  2. First, on your iDevice, open Settings. Go to General → scroll down to Device Management → there'll be a certificate just named with your Apple ID e-mail address, tap it → hit Trust.
    1. Now that sideloaded apps are trusted, head back to your home screen and open the Phœnix app. Tap on Prepare For Jailbreak, then skip the ancient mixtape ad (lol). Your iDevice will reboot.
    2. Once it has rebooted, re-open the Phœnix app and hit Kickstart Jailbreak, your device will respring; if there's no such button, head straight to the next step.
  4. Open Cydia. Wait for your sources to refresh and hit Return to Cydia.
    Head to the Search tab and search for "OpenSSH", select it, and hit Install. Cydia will probably give you a popup saying essential packages need upgrading (this will be the case as most jailbreaks for these old OSes need patches for a lot of core components). However, we don't need to update these packages as we're installing iOS 8 in a second anyway. Hit Ignore (Temporary). Continue on with installing OpenSSH.
  5. If you're on Windows, reboot into your Linux Live USB. If you're on macOS, ignore this.
    Occasionally, booting into Ubuntu will make your iDevice forget it has trusted your computer; in which case, make sure to hit Trust again if asked.
    1. Once OpenSSH is installed, lock your device.
    2. Have a terminal open in the Legacy-iOS-Kit/ folder. Run: 
      ./restore.sh
      On your first run, Legacy-iOS-Kit may install additional dependencies and exit, in which case you just run restore.sh again. Legacy-iOS-Kit will provide you with a user interface you can navigate with the arrow keys and use Enter to select.

    3. If you have one of the following devices, you're in huge luck!:

      • iPhone 4S (iPhone4,1)
      • iPad 2 (WiFi) (iPad2,1)
      • iPad 2 (GSM) (iPad2,2)
      • iPad 2 (CDMA) (iPad2,3)
      The following devices support being downgraded to iOS 6.1.3 directly, without needing the 8.4.1 intermediary. If one of these devices is yours, then complete the rest of this stage using iOS 6.1.3 instead of 8.4.1 and the tutorial ends there!
    4. Once your device is detected, select Downgrade/Restore, then iOS 8.4.1. Let it guide you through the process of downloading the IPSW and then restoring your device to it. It'll ask you if you'd like to jailbreak the IPSW, select No—because we'll be doing this manually later.
    5. Finally, it'll ask you for the SSH password into your device, which by default is alpine. Type exactly that and hit Enter.
    Your device will restart a couple times it'll proclaim that your device has successfully been downgraded. You can close out of the Legacy-iOS-Kit window now. You'll notice your iDevice will still be on the update screen but it's safe to turn off the program now.
    If you're on Linux, you can reboot into Windows now.

Stage 2: iOS 8

In practice, your device will now run 8.4.1 as its primary OS, but we'll set it up so that most of its space is dedicated to iOS 6, and that it boots into iOS 6 by default—so effectively you won't really know that it's an iOS 8 device except for the pre-SpringBoard boot screen having the iOS 7+ Apple logo.

We will use CoolBooter to create an iOS 6 bootable partition on your iDevice, allowing us to run iOS 6 on the bare metal of the device at full speed with no compatibility compromises. Once that's working, we will use CoolBooter Untetherer, which will automatically take us to iOS 6 when the device boots up, without user input.

The reason we are installing CoolBooter on iOS 8 rather than 9 is because iOS 8 has an untethered jailbreak, which means—once you've done the first-time jailbreaking/setup—the device will never require any more action to stay jailbroken, even after rebooting. This is useful to keep it jailbroken early in the boot process so that CoolBooter Untetherer can run completely automatically.

  1. We start by jailbreaking iOS 8. You've done this before so I'll keep it short:
    1. Use Sideloadly to sideload the EtasonJB IPA.
    2. Go to Settings → General → Device Management → <Your Apple ID> → Trust.
    3. Launch the Etason JB app, hit Etason JB!. Your device will reboot.
  2. Open Cydia, go to Sources → Edit, and remove the following sources:
    • ModMyi (http://apt.modmyi.com/ and http://modmyi.saurik.com/)
    • Ultrasn0w (http://repo666.ultrasn0w.com/)
    …and add the following source:
    • https://coolbooter.com/
    Hit Done to finish editing and Refresh to sync new package lists. We removed the Ultrasn0w and ModMyi repos because they've been shut down for many, many years at this point and aren't worth the time and storage space of keeping synced right now. This time, if Cydia says you need to update important packages, heed it and hit Complete Upgrade to properly update your system. You may need to Respring.
  3. In Cydia, go to Sources → CoolBooter → All packages → CoolBooter → Modify. The latest version of CoolBooter, 1.6, is very broken and will cause boot-loops in iOS 8. Select 1.4.1-release as the version to "downgrade" to, and hit Install. IIRC this requires a Respring too.
  4. If you think your iDevice's internet is fine:If you think your iDevice's internet is noticeably worse than your computer's and you already gathered the optional prerequisites in the intro:
    1. Open the CoolBooter app.
      1. Hit Install, and first select the partition size you want for iOS 6, I recommend maxing this out:
      2. Then hit Select, and choose the iOS version you want to install.
      3. Once that's done, hit I'm ready! and follow it through the process of downloading.
    1. Open Cydia, head to Search, search for "afc2", click on "Apple File Conduit" 2 from the Cydia/Telesphoreo repo, and hit Install. Reboot if needed.
    2. Open 3uTools on your computer.
      1. Head to Files (on the left) → File System (Jailbroken) → scroll down to var/ → cbooter/
      2. Then Import → From File and select the iOS 6 IPSW. Uploading the IPSW to the /var/cbooter/ folder will mean CoolBooter will skip downloading the IPSW on-device, and will use this provided one for the install.
    3. Open the CoolBooter app.
      1. Hit Install, and first select the partition size you want for iOS 6, I recommend maxing this out:
      2. Then hit Select, and choose the iOS version you want to install.
      3. Once that's done, hit I'm ready!.

    You can also pick to your liking a custom boot logo (or lack thereof), whether to enable verbose boot, and whether to jailbreak the target OS. You can choose what you want for these, it has no bearing on the success rate.
  5. CoolBooter will ask you to lock your device, and then it will reboot to finish installing and setting up.
  6. Once it's rebooted, open the CoolBooter app, and hit Boot. This will boot you into iOS 6 for the first time properly.

Stage 3: Setting up iOS 6 & Untether CoolBooter

Now you're in iOS 6, but you need to manually boot into it each time. For this stage we will set it so that booting into iOS 6 is automatic. We will also set up new root certificates to fix HTTPS errors in Safari and Cydia. iOS 6 is (obviously) very out of date, and thus its root certificates are long expired; updating the root certificates on your iDevice will mean it recognises new CAs (certificate authorities, who sign individual website certificates), and therefore it will recognise new websites signed with modern day certificates.

Optionally, if you chose to jailbreak your iDevice, and you're on one that doesn't include the battery percentage in the status bar—such as an iPod touch—we can add that too.

    1. To start, open Safari and head to:
      https://cydia.invoxiplaygames.uk/certificates/
      You may get a warning that Safari can't verify the signature for this website, hit Continue anyway.
    2. Tap the ISRG Root X1 CA (Let's Encrypt) menu, which will download the new root certificate. When iOS prompts you, trust this certificate.

  2. If you jailbroke your device and want a battery percentage: (Skip this step otherwise)

    First, check that you don't already have this option in stock iOS. Sometimes it's not enabled by default.
    Check Settings → General → Usage → scroll down to Battery Usage → enable Battery Percentage. If this option is not there, then continue on with this step.
    1. Open Cydia. Go to Search and look up "SBSettings" and install it. You'll need to Respring.
    2. Open the SBSettings app on your home screen. Scroll down to the System Options section → tap the System Options menu → turn on Enable Numeric Battery.
    3. Optionally, you can also go to Hide Icons and turn off the SBSettings and Activator app icons if you have no other need for those two apps and you want to keep your home screen tidy. (This, too, requires a Respring)
  3. CoolBooter will need you to boot into your target OS (iOS 6) at least once before installing CoolBooter Untetherer, which you've done now!
    1. Hold down the home and power buttons until you see the Apple logo, then release. Wait for your device to reboot into iOS 8.
    2. Open Cydia → Sources → CoolBooter → All packages → CoolBooter Untetherer → Install; Respring when it prompts you to.
    3. When the device reboots, open the CoolBooter app, hit Boot, and lock your device when prompted. It'll reboot straight into iOS 6.
    You're done! Enjoy bare-metal iOS 6; go sync your iTunes library or sideload old apps! Have fun!

Troubleshooting

Issues refreshing repositories in Cydia or signing apps in Sideloadly

The most common cause for this is an incorrect system time. This can be caused in Windows by the way Ubuntu works with the hardware clock in your computer, meaning sometimes when you reboot into Windows the clock is set to the wrong time. This breaks HTTPS/TLS stuff and means Apple's servers won't want to talk to you for app signing.
A similar issue arises in iOS after you flash an iOS update to it: usually the system's timezone is reset and thus Cydia throws a bunch of SSL errors at you when trying to refresh sources.

I need to boot into iOS 8!

If for whatever reason you need to access iOS 8 after untethering CoolBooter, completely shut down your iDevice, then turn it on and once the Apple logo shows, hold down the Volume Down button until you land at the iOS 8 lock screen.


End Result

You now have a device that boots into iOS 6—and it's not an emulator! This means that iTunes, 3uTools, or whatever will see your device as truly running iOS 6! iOS 6 is running directly on your hardware, no emulation layers or containers or weird incompatibilities about it! Technically yes, you are running an iOS 8 device on the small, default boot partition, but iOS 6 is on the bigger partition and iOS 8's single purpose as soon as it's detected to be running is to immediately reboot straight to iOS 6.

With this, you can probably also expect far better battery life. My 20-second-iPod I mentioned in the introduction was downgraded about two days ago as of writing, and has been unplugged for about 50 hours, and is sitting at just above 50%!!! That's right, my 12 year old very well loved iPod touch is outperforming my 2 year old iPhone 12 mini in standby times!