In this guide, we will show you the steps to download an old version of LineageOS ROM for downgrading purposes. When it comes to switching over to customized firmware, then there exist quite a few options to choose from. Some of the noteworthy ones include the likes of crDroid, Evolution X, Paranoid Android, PixelOS, and LineageOS. Among them, it’s the latter one that has carved out a name for itself and is without a shadow of a doubt the best player in the town.
Offering a clean stock OS with just the required features and providing a fast snappy and performance-enhanced system, there’s not much left to ask. Moreover, it offers official support for numerous devices so you should expect bug fixes, introduction of new features, and a support for longer time frame when compared with its counterpart. With that said, you might come across a few issues while daily driving this ROM.
From excessive battery drainage to device overheating or apps not working along the expected lines, there could be quite a few problems that you might have to deal with. So in such cases, your best bet is to downgrade the ROM to its older build. However, that could prove to be quite a challenging task. This is because LineageOS only houses the last 5-6 builds of a ROM. So if the latest OS has just been released, you might stumble upon its older release among those 5 builds.
But if the version that you are using is 6-7 months old, then you are out of luck as none of the variants hosted by them would be on the older firmware. So what could be done in such cases? Well, this guide will show you a nifty workaround using which you can download the old version of LineageOS ROM and then use it for downgrading purposes. So without further ado, let’s get started.
How to Download Old Version of LineageOS for Downgrade
In order to get this job done, we will be using the ever-so-popular Wayback Machine website. For the unaware, this site archives all the websites that existed across the World Wide Web ever since its inception [1996]. To date, it has over 860 billion web pages which speaks volumes in itself.
There is a high chance that it has archived the LineageOS Downloads page for your device when it hosted the older build. So without further ado, let’s check it out. For reference, I am using a OnePlus 9 Pro which only has the LineageOS 21 build based on Android 14 hosted on the official LineageOS download site. So we will take the help of Wayback Machine to download LineageOS 20 Android 13-based ROM for this device.
- To begin with, head over to the Downloads section of the LineageOS
- For instance, in my case, the download link looks something like this:
https://download.lineageos.org/devices/lemonadep/builds
- Now head over to the Wayback Machine website and paste the URL.
- It will now give you a timeline with all the saved snapshots of that link.
- Choose the year/month/day/on which you believe Lineage might have the older version of the ROM.
- So try out your luck [and a little bit of technical know-how regarding Android and LineageOS release dates] and ultimately you should be able to grab the older build of the ROM.
For example, since I was looking for the Android 13 build, I straightaway headed over to the year 2023. For the month, I had to choose from March, April, and October. I gave a random shot in April and chose 22 April. Unfortunately, that didn’t have any saved pages. So then I looked at 19th April and voila, I got hold of the older builds!
That’s it. These were the steps to download an old version of LineageOS ROM for downgrading purposes. You may now use the older LineageOS files to perform a downgrade, but before that, don’t forget to do a format data [which will wipe off all the data from your device]. Apart from that, if you have any queries concerning the aforementioned steps, do let us know in the comments. We will get back to you with a solution at the earliest.
