How to Downgrade iOS 6 Beta to iOS 5.1.1

If you went ahead and installed iOS 6 beta and determined the buggy nature of the first developer release isn’t for you, it’s time to downgrade. Most developers should know how to do this already, but if not this process is easy and you’ll be back to running iOS 5.1.1 in no time at all.

Downgrading is identical on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

1. Turn the device off, connect it to the computer via USB, and launch iTunes
2. Place the iOS device into DFU mode: with the device off, hold down the Power and Home buttons together for 10 seconds then release the power button, continue holding Home button until iTunes notifies you of a device in recovery mode being detected. The devices screen should stay black as if turned off.
3. Restore within iTunes through either method a or b:
• a: Restore from the iOS 5.1.1 backup you made prior to installing iOS 6 beta
• b: Restore to iOS 5.1.1 IPSW by Option-Clicking the “Restore” button, and then restore from iCloud backup when finished
4. Let iTunes restore back to iOS 5.1.1, the device will reboot when finished

Typically you can’t downgrade iOS versions so easily, but because Apple is still signing iOS 5.1.1 this allows downgrading to commence with minimal effort.

Troubleshooting the Downgrade:
If you get any strange errors (3194, 1013, etc) when trying to restore, you probably have Apple’s servers blocked in your hosts file. This is relatively common for people who jailbroke a device at some point in their iOS usage. Remove any blocks to Apple’s servers from /etc/hosts and try again.

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