How To Downgrade From MIUI 12.5 To MIUI 11?

MIUI 12.5 System

As we know, in December, at the Xiaomi Mi 11 new product launch conference, Xiaomi first released the MIUI 12.5 system. The MIUI 12.5 update brings much more privacy-centric features, app optimizations, notification improvements and some minor visual improvements. The new skin update also brings a new feature called MIUI+, which enables mirroring your phone to a Windows PC. The MIUI 12.5 is available for the following devices – the Mi 10 series, the Redmi K30 series, the Redmi K20 series, the Redmi Note 9, the Mi 10 Lite, the Redmi 10X series, the Xiaomi CC 9e/CC9, and the Redmi Note 7 series.

Although Xiaomi hasn’t exactly marketed the MIUI 12.5 update as the kind that brings forward interface changes, there have been several tweaks with the Control Center and MIUI Camera, coupled with many new animations. This is quite understandable considering that Xiaomi always wanted to promote MIUI 12.5 as the kind of update that’s keen on improving what’s already on the table and further optimizing it.

Besides all of this, it is quite possible that after updating your phone you may face a number of problems, failures and bugs. So after the release of MIUI 12.5, many Xiaomi phone users are not happy with the performance of MIUI 12.5 and most of them want to downgrade from MIUI 12.5 to MIUI 11. So day by day, we are receiving so many comments and mail on our inbox that how we can go back to MIUI 11 from MIUI 12.5 or how to revert back to MIUI 11 from MIUI 12.5 without bricking our device. Here in this post, we will cover all of these questions and will guide you on how you can easily go back to MIUI 11 with the fastboot method.

So If you have detected that after updating your Xiaomi it presents an error, failure or bug, the first thing you must do is check which version you have. To do this, just go to Settings> Phone information> MIUI version and write down the version you have installed.

However, to downgrade your phone you need a PC or laptop and to unlock Bootloader on the Xiaomi phone. These are the main requirements to downgrade your Xiaomi phone from MIUI 12.5 to MIUI 11. The steps are a little bit longer. But they are the official way to downgrade your phone.

How to Downgrade From MIUI 12.5 to MIUI 11

It’s highly recommended to carefully read through the whole guide before doing anything with your device. Even the smallest mistakes can cause issues. So read the guide very carefully and follow all the steps one by one on your device. And yes, do take the full backup of your phone because this process will wipe all the data from your device.

Note that you are doing everything at your own risk and bear all responsibility for your actions.

Firstly, you must download files to downgrade your phone to MIUI 11.

• Unlock Bootloader of your Xiaomi phone. Without Unlock you can’t go back to the MIUI 11.
• Install the ADB drivers on your PC.
• Download Xiaomi Flash tool and install the same on your Windows PC.
• Download the Fastboot ROM for your device here (Don’t Download the Recovery ROM, you need an MIUI 11 Fastboot ROM for your phone).

Secondly, you must download MIUI 12.5 using Fastboot ROM.

• Download the Latest MIUI Fastboot ROM for your phone and unzip the folder on your desktop.
• Now, Files are ready to flash on your phone.
• Open the Mi Flash tool on your desktop and boot your phone into Fastboot mode. To do this, first turn off your phone and hold down the Volume Down button + Power button for few seconds.
• Now, your Xiaomi phone will boot in the Fastboot mode and you will see the Mi Bunny on the screen of your phone.
• Once your phone in the Fastboot mode, connect your phone to the PC with the USB cable.
• Next, go to the Mi flashing tool and tap on the ‘Refresh’ button to see the connected devices.

• Then go the Extracted MIUI Fastboot folder and copy the path of the folder.

• Now, go back to the Flash tool and paste that path in the “Select” Option.

• Then, in the right bottom of your Mi flash tool, you will see three options “clean all”, “save user data” and “clean all and lock”. From here, check the Clean all option. If you don’t want to delete data from your phone then choose the “Save user data” option, in case if you want to lock the bootloader of your phone then choose the “Clean all and Lock” option.

• Now, Tap on ‘Flash’ at the top right to start the flashing process.

• This will flash the Fastboot MIUI ROM on your phone. Once it completes, you will see the “Success” message on the screen, and your phone will reboot.

What If You Can’t Downgrade MIUI Version

We have to accept that you can’t downgrade MIUI version in some smartphones from MIUI 12.5 to MIUI 11. Because Xiaomi decided to stop this option and introduced Anti Roll-Back (ARB) ban. This is also related to Android 10 and the latest changes in Google security policies. Probably, we will see the Anti Roll-Back will be place in every other Android 10 or newer devices, by Xiaomi.

The smartphone which is released after the 2nd half of 2017 might be affected by the ARB ban. This means if you have MIUI 12.5 Android 10, then you can’t downgrade from MIUI 12.5  to 11.

Anti-Rollback Protection

Xiaomi implemented anti-rollback protection in the latest versions of MIUI. Google’s anti-rollback security is a feature of Android Verify Boot 2.0. It prevents the device from booting.

Anti-rollback protection is necessary to prevent attackers from loading older software on a device that’s susceptible to an exploit. The most significant difference between Google and Xiaomi’s implementation is that Google’s anti-rollback protection can be disabled if you unlock the bootloader while Xiaomi’s can’t be disabled.

Once you install a build with anti-rollback protection enabled on a Xiaomi device, you can’t go back.