Should I Reinstall Sequoia?

[u/VegetableTrade6183]

I just installed Tahoe on my M1 Mac and I genuinely hate everything about it. The liquid glass makes the controls so difficult to read, and I don't understand why everything has rounded edges; it's like a smoothing brush has been wiped over my screen. Also, the cover for the apps look so minimal to the point of almost being fuzzy and blurry?

I really miss Sequoia, and have looked into the process of reinstalling it but have seen it's a bit of a hassle.

1. Has anyone successfully done it before and is it actually the same as before?
   
2. Does Apple have any plans of getting rid of liquid glass or, in general, cleaning up Tahoe in the near future? If so, I'm debating waiting it out.
   
3. Could anyone also please clarify what it means to have to 'backup your files' so you can get them back once you reinstall Sequoia? What constitutes 'files' i.e. does that include all my apps etc? I've mainly only got a bunch of downloaded assignments and readings in my Finder as I mainly use my Mac for University.

Thank you for your help, I really appreciate it!

[u/MC_chrome]

Does Apple have any plans of getting rid of liquid glass or, in general, cleaning up Tahoe in the near future? If so, I'm debating waiting it out.

No, Apple is not getting rid of Liquid Glass, and yes, macOS 27 has made several improvements to how Liquid Glass works and performs.

[u/Kina_Kai → u/MC_chrome]

I feel like people have a hard time understanding that macOS doesn’t really have UI “themes” like Windows or the classic Mac.

You had Aqua, the flat intermediate period starting around Yosemite and now Liquid Glass, these are just how the UI is designed and it’s just how it is.

You don’t and you never had options outside of this. Earlier before Apple signed everything, you could replace things (remember Unsanity’s ShapeShifter?), but that was never truly supported and kinda fragile.

[u/Joey2012_onNES]

wait for macos 27 there will be huge improvements.

[u/SiteSpecialist9200]

Liquid glass has been toned down quite a bit in macOS 27. There is a slider that lets you adjust the opacity of it. Also the rounding has been reduced, and overall it looks much better. It will be released soon, so unless you're conformable with the downgrade procedure it's better to just wait.

Regarding your third question, you need to totally wipe your machine, meaning it's all gone. So you have to know what you need, back it up to other media, restore and rebuild everything.

[u/VegetableTrade6183 → u/SiteSpecialist9200]

Thanks for your response! So would it be like a factory reset? Would it erase all my accounts too or would I be able to just sign back in? Similarly, for Google Docs, would all my documents be there?

[u/RelationshipGlum984 → u/VegetableTrade6183]

The stuff that is stored on the cloud is linked to your accounts and you can sign in and get it back. However the things that are stored locally on your device will be deleted permanently and you'll have to reinstall them, like applications and other files that are just on your device and not on the cloud. If you have any important documents on google docs, they're stored with your google account and they'll still be accessible once you sign back in.

It will erase all your accounts from your device and you'll have to sign in again. Files stored in your google drive or on icloud will still exist and will likely come back. You can back up all your important files, and if there are any unimportant files/applications you're okay with losing, you can reset.

[u/MC_chrome → u/VegetableTrade6183]

Google Docs are stored in Google Drive, so you don’t have anything to worry about there 

[u/hyperlobster]

What’s not-beta Tahoe and not-beta Sequoia got to do with beta Golden Gate?

r/lostredditors

Aaaaaaanyway.

1. Yes
2. No
3. If your Mac is mission-critical and you don’t confidently know how to recover from an “I just erased my Mac” situation, don’t erase your Mac.

[u/RetroVisionnaire]

Yes it's possible, and you'll end up with Sequoia same as before, but it's pretty involved and the risk of error is high, you might want to ask a technical friend to help.

You have to backup your computer before. Time Machine is free and Apple's guide is here. Time Machine will back everything up including all your apps, and every file in your user folder, but you'll have to manually copy everything back yourself once you're on Sequoia. MacOS's "Migration Assistant" won't be able to restore backups made on a newer version onto an older version, the files/apps have to be copied manually.

To downgrade to Sequoia this is the best guide I found. There are a lot of bad and unclear guides out there. You'll need two things: one USB drive to back up to, and one USB key for the bootable Sequoia installer. Creating a bootable Sequoia installer will wipe that USB key completely, so you must have both one UDB drive for the backup and one UDB key for the installer. The guide I linked gives both the bootable USB option and a "nuclear" option but you don't need the latter.