With the recently released PS4 Jailbreak for Firmware 9.00, a lot of people are wondering how to upgrade to 9.00, without going “too far” and install 9.03 by mistake. Remember, if you install 9.03, you can’t go back to 9.00 later on.

Updating your PS4 manually is simple and just requires that you download the right firmware update file, onto a USB stick. Check our quick guide below to get it right:

0. Requirements

•  A USB Key with 2GB of space (you might get away with less, but worst case scenario you have a 1GB update file to fit on there)

1. Download PS4 Firmware 9.00

Note that you can use either the recovery firmware or the retail firmware. The retail firmware is typically smaller, the recovery firmware is bigger (and needed only if you have booting issues with your current PS4 firmware).

• You can download the PS4 Firmware 9.00 from the Internet Archive here : https://archive.org/download/PS4-System-Firmwares/Firmware%209.00/PS4UPDATE.PUP (link courtesy of Darthsternie). Or get the recovery firmware here: https://archive.org/download/PS4-Recovery-Firmwares/Firmware%209.00/PS4UPDATE.PUP
  • Note: if you don’t want to put too much strain on the archive.org servers, there are also torrent links for the two versions, retail and recovery respectively: https://archive.org/download/PS4-System-Firmwares/PS4-System-Firmwares_archive.torrent – https://archive.org/download/PS4-Recovery-Firmwares/PS4-Recovery-Firmwares_archive.torrent
  • Alternatively you can get retail and recovery firmwares from Darksoftware’s website (login required).

• MD5 For retail PUP file: e923e6d210399f236177e332843e2754
• MD5 For recovery PUP file: 674420f041cb5845aae85928751ccd0e

2. Prepare USB Key and put Firmware update on it

From here we’re just following the standard steps of a manual update, as outlined on PlayStation’s official site:

1. Format your usb key in FAT32 (other formats might not be recognized by your PS4)
2. at the root your usb key, create a folder named PS4. Inside that folder, create a folder named UPDATE
3. Copy the PS4UPDATE.PUP file (that’s the 9.00 Firmware file you just downloaded) inside the UPDATE folder
   • You should now have the update file on your usb stick and it should look something like that: X:\PS4\UPDATE\PS4UPDATE.PUP

3. Update your PS4 to 9.00

1. Ensure your PS4 is disconnected from the internet before turning it on (either unplug the LAN cable, or turn off your Wifi router for a moment). This is to ensure the PS4 gets the 9.00 update from your usb key, and does not instead try to fetch 9.03 online.
2. Plug the USB drive containing the system update file into the PS4 console.
3. Go to Settings > System Software Update on your PS4. The console should detect 9.00 from your USB key, and you can proceed to install.

Your console should then reboot and if everything went well, you’re now on 9.00. Congrats!

Note: if you’re worried or are having trouble, you can instead reboot your PS4 in safe mode and select Update System Software > Update from USB storage there. This process might only work with the recovery firmware.