[✅Solved] release upgrade aborted: failed to downgrade packages

When trying to upgrade a Pop_OS machine with sudo pop-upgrade release upgrade I ran into the following error: Release upgrade status: release upgrade aborted: failed to downgrade packages

Fix release upgrade aborted: failed to downgrade packages

In order to fix the failed to downgrade packages error you’re going to have to upgrade manually by switching all the package sources to the newest version.

Update apt sources

Update all the apt sources manually by editing /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ and switching the versioned sources from impish to jammy (or whatever version you are upgrading to.)

sudo sed -i 's/impish/jammy/g' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/system.sources /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pop-os-release.sources /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pop-os-apps.sources

You may also need to run the below command to migrate from old-release if you see the error in the below

sudo sed -i 's/old-releases/archive/g' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/system.sources /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pop-os-release.sources /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pop-os-apps.sources

Run the below commands to finish upgrading the OS.

sudo apt full-upgrade

pop-upgrade recovery upgrade from-release

pop-upgrade release upgrade

Sources

https://github.com/pop-os/pop/issues/2410#issuecomment-1128023435

https://github.com/pop-os/pop/issues/2410#issuecomment-1137106843

https://github.com/pop-os/pop/issues/2410#issuecomment-1193389700