Downgrading your PS4 may void its warranty and potentially brick your console. Proceed at your own risk.
The myth suggests that if you take this official update file, put it on a USB drive, and force your PS4 to "Initialize" or "Update," you can roll the clock back to 2013.
While the dream of downgrading persists, the reality of PS4 security makes it a hardware challenge, not a software trick. If you are looking to run homebrew, your time is better spent looking for "GoldHEN" compatible with your current firmware, or finding a console that hasn't been updated in years, rather than trying to force your modern machine to live in the past.
This process is invasive and typically requires specialized tools and skills:
As of 2026, the last reliably jailbreakable firmware is . Firmwares 9.03, 9.04, 10.00, and above have no public jailbreak. If you get a 1302 error while trying to go from 10.50 to 9.00, you are out of luck using software methods.
