3 Steps Get back Your Lost Mac Files. Specify the location where you lose your data, and choose the drive to scan. Scan the selected drive or device. The quick scan starts firstly to find the deleted files and then deep scan searches thoroughly for more files. Step 3: Recover. Recover Word Document Mac. Effective ways to recover unsaved, lost and deleted Word document on Mac. Free Data Recovery Software Mac. Top five completely free data recovery software for Mac to quickly find lost files. Video Recovery Software. Free video recovery software can recover formatted or deleted videos from any device.

We’ve all experienced that horrible stomach-churning pang of dread when we delete a file that we didn’t mean to delete. Or when we realise that the file we trashed last week is the one we need for an important piece of work that’s due to be submitted tomorrow. The bad news is that there’s no Mac undelete feature. The good news is that, most of the time, and depending on what steps you’ve taken beforehand, it’s relatively easy to recover deleted files on Mac.

Get Disk Drill on Setapp, a Mac tool that brings every deleted file back — instantly. Whatever the reason of data loss, you’ll rescue it all in few minutes.

Check if the file has really been deleted

The first step is to check if the file is gone. If you dragged it to the Trash but haven’t emptied it recently, it should still be there. Click on the Trash icon in the Dock and inspect the Finder window that opens. If you see the file, drag it out of the Trash and onto the Desktop. If the file isn’t there, things get more complicated, but there’s still hope.

How to recover deleted files on a Mac with Time Machine

This is the part where we remind you that you should have a regular incremental backup plan in place. Preferably, it should incorporate two separate backups to two different destinations, in different physical locations.

If you use a tool that makes a bootable clone, such as Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper, and regularly update the clone, all you have to do to recover a file is mount the clone and copy the file back to your Mac. If you take away nothing else from this article, please understand the importance of backing up your Mac on a regular basis. Your future self will thank you for it.

The simplest way to backup files on a Mac is to use Apple’s Time Machine, which is installed as part of macOS. You set it up once and forget it. Assuming you use Time Machine, it’s very easy to recover individual files. Here’s how:

1. Go to the Time Machine menu in the Mac’s menu bar and choose Enter Time Machine.

2. Swipe upwards with two fingers on your Mac’s trackpad or press the up arrow next to the Finder window that appears in order to navigate to a time before you deleted the file.

3. Once you’ve reached a backup from a time before you trashed the file, click on the Finder window and navigate the Finder in the normal way until you find the file you want to recover.

4. Press the spacebar to preview the file, and if it’s the one you want, click Restore. The file will now be restored to your current Finder and you’ll be able to open and edit it.

How to recover deleted photos on Mac

When you delete a photo in the Photos app, it doesn’t get rid of it straight away. Instead, it outs in an album called Recently Deleted and keeps it there for 30 days. Then it’s removed permanently. So, if the photo you want to recover was deleted less than 30 days ago, all you have to do is go to Recently Deleted, under Library in Photos’ sidebar, click on the photo you’re looking for and press Recover. It will then be moved back to your main Library.

How to recover music files in iTunes

If you delete a track from iTunes, it asks you if you want to move the file to the Trash. If you said no, all you have to do to recover the file is go to the Finder and navigate to your iTunes music folder (usually in Music>iTunes>iTunes Media), find the file and drag it onto the iTunes icon in the Dock.

If you said yes, and the file is still in the Trash, do the following.

1. Launch iTunes and choose Preferences from the iTunes menu.

2. Click the Advanced tab.

3. Makes sure there’s a checkmark in the box labelled 'Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library’.

4. Close Preferences.

5. Drag the file from the Trash onto the Desktop.

6. Drag it onto iTunes’ icon in the Dock.

7. When it’s imported, drag the file from the Desktop back to the Trash (a copy will have been added to your iTunes folder).

If you’ve emptied the Trash since you deleted the file from iTunes, you can use Time Machine to find it in the earlier version of your iTunes folder and recover it from there.

File recovery on Mac: How restore older versions of a document

Built in apps on macOS, such as Text Edit and Preview, as well as the iWork apps and many third party applications use a feature of the operating system known as versioning. That means that when you open a file and edit it, macOS retains copies of previous versions of the file so you can revert back to them if you need to.

Here’s how to use it:

1. Open the file.

2. Click on the File menu and choose Revert to then Browse all versions.

3. You’ll see that the screen changes and looks a bit like Time Machine.

4. To find the version you want to revert to, click on the tick marks on the right of the screen or click on the title bars of the documents on the right of the screen, or click the up arrow to the right of the documents.

5. You’ll see the date of each version displayed below its preview. If the document preview doesn’t display automatically, click Load Version to download it from iCloud.

6. When you find the version you want to revert to, click Restore or to open it as a new document, hold down the Option key and select Restore a Copy.

If you open a document, make changes to it, then decide you don’t want to save them, go to the File menu and select Revert To, then Last Opened.

Data recovery on Mac when you don’t use Time Machine

If you don’t use Time Machine, all is not lost (though we’d suggest you start using it — it’s the easiest way to recover files you accidentally delete).

There are several options when it comes to data recovery software for Mac. One of the best is Disk Drill, which scans your Mac for deleted files, allows you to specify the kind of file you’re looking for — text document, audio, file or video, for example, and lists everything it finds. You can then preview files to check if they’re what you’re looking for and recover them if they are.

The key point when using any data recovery tool is to stop using your Mac as soon as you realise you need to recover a file. When you empty the Trash, files in it aren’t deleted immediately. Instead, the reference to them in the file index is removed and the space they occupy made available for use. If you stop using your Mac immediately, the file won’t be over-written and data recovery software will have a good chance of recovering it intact. The longer you use your Mac, the more chance there is of it being over-written completely.

How to delete files safely

If you want to delete files easily and never worry about removing the wrong ones, use a great tool CleanMyMac X. Its Smart Scan relies on just one button to scan your Mac and then remove all the junk it finds. All the files are 100% safe-to-delete as CleanMyMac always refers to the Safety Database in order to correctly select and remove the junk. Moreover, you can always view the files before removing them and decide whether you really want to get rid of them. CleanMyMac is incredibly easy to use, so give it a try. It's available for a free download here.

Mac data recovery: the last resort

If none of the above solutions work, and if the deleted files are very important, the last resort is to take your Mac to a specialist data recovery company. These services use specialist software to interrogate your Mac’s drive and rebuild lost files. However, it’s a very time consuming and expensive process and a step you should only consider if the files you need are more important than the cost of recovering them or you really can’t live without them. If you do decide to use such a service, research the companies carefully and, if possible get word of mouth recommendations from people you trust. And, as with using data recovery software, stop using your Mac immediately.

To conclude, putting a file in the Trash doesn’t delete it. And even emptying the Trash doesn’t get rid of it completely. There’s still the possibility of recovering it. However, by far the best way of making sure you don’t irreversibly delete a file you need is to make regular backups of your Mac. If you do that using the built in Time Machine, recovering a file or folder you’ve trashed is very easy indeed.

Summary :

Are you looking for the best and free Mac data recovery software? If yes, you come to the right place. MiniTool Software collects some professional and reliable Mac data recovery software and shows them in this article. You can select a suitable one according to your actual situation.

If you are a Mac computer user, a free Mac data recovery software is a necessary configuration. When your Mac files are lost or deleted for some reason, you can use such a tool to get them back.

When you search for Mac file recovery software free on the internet, you will see many choices. To guarantee the safety of the current data on your computer, you’d better select a professional and reliable Mac file recovery tool. And it is also the topic we will talk about in this article: best and free Mac data recovery software.

We will list you some Mac data recovery programs that are worth trying. You can select one according to your requirements.

This post will show you how long it will take before a deleted file is unrecoverable, how to make files unrecoverable, and how to undelete a file on Windows.

Top 5 Best and Free Mac Data Recovery Software

1. Stellar Data Recovery for Mac
2. Disk Drill for Mac
3. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac
4. Wondershare Recoverit for Mac
5. Ontrack EasyRecovery for Mac

1. Stellar Data Recovery for Mac

Stella Mac Data Recovery for Mac is a highly recommended choice. It is specially designed to retrieve different kinds of files from your Mac machine. The supported files include documents, photos, audios, videos, music files, and more.

It works under multiple situations like file deletion, virus invasion, disk failure, partition loss, system crash, etc. Besides, it can recover data from APFS, HFS, HFS+, ex-FAT, and NTFS drives. So, it can fully meet your demands for Mac data recovery.

Are you bothered by the disk you inserted was not readable by this computer when using an external hard drive on a Mac computer. Now, get some solutions here.

This software has a trial edition. You can use it to scan the drive you want to recover data from and then check whether you can find your needed files from the scan results. Now, you can go to the MiniTool download center to get this Mac file recovery tool.

After downloading and installing this software on your Mac device, you can use it to restore your lost and deleted files. Here is a guide:

1. Open Stellar Data Recovery for Mac.

2. On this Select What To Recover interface, you can choose Recover Everything. You can also customize the scanning ranges based on your own requirements.

3. Click Next to continue.

4. On this Select Location interface, you need to select the drive you need to scan. If you want to perform a deep scan, you need to turn on the Deep Scan button that is on the bottom-left side of the interface.

5. Click Next to start the scanning process.

6. When the scanning process ends, there will be a small pop-up window saying Scanning Completed Successfully! You need to click OK to close this window and see the scan results.

7. By default, this software will show you the Classic List that contains both existing and deleted files on the Mac PC. If you only want to recover your deleted data, you can switch to Deleted List to make this software only show you the deleted items. Then, you can open each folder to find the deleted files you want to recover.

This software allows you to preview some types of files like images, videos, and more. If you are not sure whether it is the file you want to restore, you can double-click on that file to preview it.

Since it is the trial edition of this software, you are not allowed to use it to recover your needed files. But you can update this freeware to a full edition and then recover files to a suitable location. Here you need to know that you’d better not save the data to its original location. Otherwise, the deleted files can be overwritten and become unrecoverable.

When every step is done, you can access the specified storage location to directly see and use the recovered files.

Comprehensive Evaluation

Stellar Data Recovery for Mac: ★★★★☆

Pros:

• It can recover all types of files.
• It supports multiple types of storage devices.
• It can recover data from an unbootable Mac computer.
• It supports previewing files.

Cons:

You need to update to a full edition if you want to use it to recover data from the scan results.

Stellar Data Recovery is one of the best data recovery tools we’ve used, with highly customizable searches, a huge file-type library, and deep scan abilities. techradar.com

2. Disk Drill for Mac

Disk Drill is a very famous Mac data recovery software. It supports the latest macOS 10.15 Catalina. It can recover all your lost and deleted files on your Mac computer. No matter you want to recover data from a hard drive, SSD, memory card, SD card, or pen drive on your Mac computer, this software can always work.

It is very easy to use this software to retrieve deleted files from your Mac computer. You just need to download this tool to your device, drag it to the Applications folder, launch it, and then select the drive you want to recover data from to scan. When the scanning process ends, you can preview the scanned files and then select your needed files to recover.

On the other hand, this software also has some other useful features like disk cleanup, duplicate finder, data backup, and more. These are also some necessary features for your Mac computer.

Do you want to delete duplicate files from your Windows computer? This article shows you how to find and delete duplicate files using duplicate file finders.

Comprehensive Evaluation

Disk Drill for Mac: ★★★★☆

Pros:

• It supports many storage devices like internal Macintosh hard drives, external hard drives, cameras, iPhones, iPads, iPods, Android devices, USB flash drives, Kindles, and memory cards.
• It can recover data from an unbootable Mac computer.
• It supports previewing files.
• It has more functional features like disk cleanup, duplicate finder, data backup, and more.

Cons:

If you want to recover all your files without limits, you need to use a Pro or Enterprise edition.

If you have Mac with a traditional hard drive, Disk Drill Pro offers one of the most advanced data recovery utilities available. pcmag.com

3. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac

EaseUS is a professional computer supplier and its products include partition manager, data recovery software, data backup tool, etc. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac is one representative and it is specially designed to recover your Mac data under different situations.

Like other Mac file recovery tools, this software can recover your lost images, videos, documents, music files, and more from various types of data storage devices like internal hard drives, external hard drives, SD cards, and more.

After getting this software, you can open it, select the target drive to scan, and then choose your desired files from the scan results to recover. With the free edition of this EaseUS Mac data recovery free edition, you can recover 2GB data without paying any cent.

Comprehensive Evaluation

EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac: ★★★★

Pros:

• You can use the free edition to recover 2GB files.
• It can recover 1000+ types of files, including documents, images, videos, archives, and more.
• It supports many storage devices like external HDD/SSD, fusion drive, USB drive, SD card, CF card, Digital Camera, Video Player, and more.
• It can recover data from an unbootable Mac computer.
• It supports previewing files.

Cons:

You need to update to the Pro edition if you want to recover your data without limitations.

Overall, EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Pro is one of the most powerful file recovery programs we’ve used. It’s backed by highly advanced features, a great user interface, and a fast deep scan tool, among other things. techradar.com

4. Wondershare Recoverit for Mac

Recoverit for Mac is a software from Wondershare. It is also specially designed to get your lost data back under different situations like system crash, virus attack, file deletion, formatting, and more. It supports the latest macOS and APFS, ExFAT, FAT16, FAT32, HFS+, NTFS, Ext2, Ext 3, and Ext4 file systems.

After entering this software, you can select the target drive to scan and then find the files you want to recover from the scan results.

Comprehensive Evaluation

Wondershare Recoverit for Mac: ★★★★

Pros:

• It can recover 1000+ types of files.
• It supports many storage devices like hard drive, external hard drive, USB flash drive, SSD, digital camera, Drone camera, SD card, CF card, etc.
• It can recover data from an unbootable Mac computer.
• It supports previewing files that are less than 15 MB.

Cons:

Not all files are recoverable.

Wondershare Data Recovery is the best data recovery tool I have ever used in my life, it allows to recover huge range of file formats on nutshell, though, data recovery solutions are generally used to recover accidentally or system-deleted files, corrupted, deleted or formatted partitions, or data on crashed hard drives. g2.com

Are you looking for solutions to recover videos from DJI drones or recover photos from DJI camcorder? You can read this article to get solutions.

5. Ontrack EasyRecovery for Mac

Ontrack EasyRecovery for Mac is another professional Mac data recovery software and you can use its free edition to recover up to 1GB data. This software can work in different situations like file deletion, partition deletion, formatting, and more.

Comprehensive Evaluation

Ontrack EasyRecovery for Mac: ★★★☆

Pros:

• It can recover data from various types of devices like internal and external hard drives, SSDs, RAIDS, USB, optical media, and memory cards.
• It supports APFS, HFS, HFS+, NTFS, FAT, ExFAT volumes.
• It can repair damaged and corrupt photo and video files

Cons:

• It can’t recover data from a computer that is unbootable.
• Its paid edition is more expensive than some competitors.
• It has no built-in file previewer.

Ontrack EasyRecovery is the most powerful, thorough data recovery software we've tested, and it's blazing fast, too. Its only real drawback is a sometimes-daunting interface. pcmag.com

How to Select the Best Mac Data Recovery Software?

Basic Requirements

First, you should know the common features an excellent and professional Mac data recovery software should own:

• Has an easy-to-use interface.
• Recovers various types of data, including photos, videos, audios, music files, documents, and more.
• Recovers files from different types of storage devices like hard disk drives, solid-state drives, SD cards, memory cards, and more.
• Supports the latest Mac version.
• Recovers data from unbootable computers.
• Supplies 24*7 technical support.

Expect Ontrack EasyRecovery for Mac, which can recover data from an unbootable computer, all the rest four programs are designed with this function.

Prices

Those are the prices for all editions of each Mac data recovery software. You can select one according to your actual situation. You can also go to the official site of each Mac data recovery software to get more price information.

Stellar Data Recovery for Mac

Disk Drill for Mac

Free Data Recovery Software

EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac

Wondershare Recoverit for Mac

Ontrack EasyRecovery for Mac

Performance

The most important element of a Mac data recovery software is its performance.

Scanning Time

Normally, the first two software has a better performance and the whole scanning process can end within 30 minutes. If the disk you want to scan is too large, the whole process will last longer. But it will still end within 2 or 3 hours.

Recovering Data from Unbootable Mac Device

Osx Undelete Free

If your macOS is damaged or corrupt due to some reasons and you want to recover data from your device, Ontrack EasyRecovery for Mac is not available because it doesn’t support creating a bootable device for Mac data recovery.

Extra Features

Besides, some of these free Mac data recovery tools have their extra features like data backup and duplicate files finder in Disk Drill for Mac. You can dig more features when using them.

Bottom Line

In this post, we show you 5 reliable and safe professional free Mac data recovery software. You can just select one based on your actual requirements. Should you have any related issues, you can let us know in the comment or contact us via [email protected].

Mac Data Recovery Software FAQ

1. Go to Trash.
2. Find the file or folder you want to restore. Then, right-click it.
3. Select Put Back from the pop-out menu.

Undelete Mac Free

After these three steps, the selected file or folder will be restored to its original location.

Recovering Deleted Files On Mac

Undelete Files Mac Freeware