Impatient? You Can Clean Install iOS 7 GM Right Now

Though you should be patient and wait a week for the official release of iOS 7 on the 18th, you technically don’t have to. For the incredibly impatient who don’t mind a few inconveniences, you can get a head start and update a compatible iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to the iOS 7 GM build right now. Of course there’s a catch: you’ll have to download the iOS 7 GM build IPSW from third parties, you have to do a clean install (not an update), and you won’t be able to sync the upgraded iOS 7 device to a computer afterwards – that means no backups, music transfers, restoring from a backup through iTunes, etc – and those inconveniences will remain until the public build of iTunes 11.1 comes out. If for some reason that sounds good to you, then Lifehacker offers up the solution with plenty of links to the GM build to get you on your way, and beyond that, it’s like any other clean installation of iOS.

Warning/Note: This is not recommended, we are relaying this for informational purposes only. Proceed entirely at your own risk. Syncing a computer with an iOS 7 device requires a version of iTunes that is not yet released to the public (it is currently in beta), that means if you use this approach to update a device to iOS 7 you will not be able to sync it to a computer at all – no local backups or restoring from a backup through iTunes, no syncing music from iTunes on the computer, etc. Yes, this is a temporary inconvenience until iTunes 11.1 is released to the public alongside iOS 7 next week. This is being reiterated for thorough understanding. In summary, you should wait for the official release of iOS 7 and the next version of iTunes to arrive and you won’t have any troubles.

• Back up first to iTunes and to iCloud – this is essential because it allows you to recover if something goes wrong
• Head on over to Lifehacker for the rest of the guide and links to grab the GM build

The process is basically the same as using IPSW anywhere else for a restore. When finished, the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch will boot into a nice and fresh iOS 7 installation. If you backed up to iCloud, you’ll be able to restore from there and get your settings and apps back, otherwise just set up the device as new. The third option is to install the buggy version if iTunes 11.1 beta (not recommended) also offered by Lifehacker, which would allow you to sync the iOS 7 device to a computer, but installing beta software is not recommended unless you are a developer with direct experience running such things.

Help! iOS 7 Bricked My iPhone/iPad/iPod!

If something went wrong, or you decided you don’t want to run iOS 7 right now, throw your iPad, iPod, or iPhone into recovery mode and then downgrade back to iOS 6. Downgrading still works for the time being, but it will phase out quickly once iOS 7 is released to the masses.

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