Mac Photo Recovery: How to Recover Deleted Photos

How to Recover Deleted Photos on a Mac

1. Open **Photos**. 2. In the sidebar on the left, select **Albums**, then double-click **Recently Deleted** (in older versions of Photos, you'll find this at the top). 3. You'll see thumbnails of your recently deleted **Photos** and videos with a caption below each one showing how many days remain until it's permanently deleted...

Quick Access to Photo Recovery on Mac

When you lose photos or images on your Mac, you can get them back easily. This page offers 5 effective ways to recover deleted photos from Mac. It's effortless to restore Mac photos whether you have backups or not. Choose a Mac photo recovery solution based on your situation.

• Method 1: Recover Permanently Deleted Photos on Mac (Recommended)
• Method 2: Restore Deleted Pictures from Mac with the Photos App (Within 30 Days)
• Method 3: How to Retrieve Deleted Files from Mac Trash
• Method 4: Restore Deleted Photos on Mac with Time Machine (Don't Empty It)
• Method 5: Recover Deleted Mac Photos from iCloud

If you have deleted pictures from your Mac hard drive or any other storage media, then those photos are permanently removed. But you can use the best Mac Data Recovery Software to recover deleted pictures from Mac. Know more about Mac photo recovery in the first method.

Method 1: Recover Permanently Deleted Photos on a Mac

Supports macOS 10.15 through 10.9

If you've lost photos from your Mac hard drive, you won't be able to retrieve them from the Photos app or Trash. What you need is the best photo recovery tool for Mac, like tools Data Recovery Wizard for Mac. With it, you can easily get back deleted pictures in various image file formats, including JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF/TIF, BMP, PSD, ORF, RAF, MRW, RAW, and more.

How to Recover Deleted Photos on a Mac:

Use this software to recover deleted pictures or photos from Mac hard drive or USB, SD card, external hard drive, and other external storage devices on your own.

Step 1: Finding the Lost Photos

Launch the Mac Data Recovery Wizard, hover the mouse over the system drive that contains your Photos Library, and click Search for Lost Files.

Select the location to scan for lost Mac pictures.

Step 2: Find an image from the gallery

When the scan is finished, click “Photos” under the “Paths” tab. All lost photos will be listed here.

Step 3: Recover photos from the library

Double-click the preview to select the right photo, and then click “Recover” to save the picture to another secure location on your Mac.

This Mac photo recovery software fully supports the Mac HFS+/FAT/NTFS/NTFS5 file systems on macOS and Mac OS X. Besides, it excels in resolving issues like:

• Recover deleted pictures, music files, and other multimedia data. • Restore recently deleted photos with their original names and folder paths. • Recover Mac data from SD cards, CompactFlash cards, USB flash drives, desktop hard disks, and more. • Retrieve photos from virus-infected, overwritten, or corrupted Mac hard drive partitions.

Also read: How to Recover Permanently Deleted Photos on iPhone

Method 2: Recover Deleted Photos from the Photos App on Mac

The Photos app is a built-in program on Mac computers that organizes and manages your pictures and photos. If you accidentally delete a photo or picture in the Photos app, don't worry. The Photos app will save your deleted items in the Recently Deleted album for up to 30 days.

You can recover deleted photos directly from the Photos app:

Step 1: Open Photos.

Step 2: In the left sidebar, click Albums. Double-click Recently Deleted (in older versions of Photos, you'll find Recently Deleted at the top).

Step 3: You'll see thumbnails of your recently deleted photos and videos, each with a caption showing how long it has left before it's permanently gone. Select the photo you want to recover.

Step 4: Click “Reclaim” in the upper right-hand corner. (If you want to save space and you just deleted some large files that you're sure you won't need, you can click “Delete All” instead.)

You can then check and reuse the recovered photos in their original library in Photos.

Method 3: How to Recover Deleted Files from the Mac Trash

If you simply moved the photos from your Mac's hard drive or desktop to the Trash, you know you can easily recover deleted photos by simply reversing the empty Trash.

Step 1: Click on the “Trash” icon on your desktop, and you will see all the files you have deleted.

Step 2: Find the pictures you want to recover and drag them to your desktop. Or right-click on them and choose "Put Back" to restore deleted photos from Mac Trash. The files will go back to where they were originally.

Method 4: Recover Deleted Photos from Mac with Time Machine

If you have a Time Machine backup of the deleted photos, then do this! Your photos, images, and graphics are safe. You can recover your lost photos by following these steps.

Step 1: Connect your Time Machine backup disk to your Mac, then click the Time Machine icon in the status menu. You can also open Time Machine by clicking "Finder" and opening the "Time Machine" app.

Step 2: At the bottom of the Mac screen and in the lower-right corner, scroll through the timeline to find the date when the photos were backed up.

You can also click the up arrow next to the Time Machine window to find the correct backup version. Double-click a photo or image to check if it's the one you lost.

Step 3. Choose the photo you want, then click “Recover” to retrieve the old version of the overwritten file.

Method 5: Recover Deleted Mac Photos from iCloud

Most people use iCloud as the central repository for their digital lives, including everything from calendars to photos. The iCloud Photo Library can store all images you shoot on an iDevice, or that you upload from a memory card to your Mac, and then push them out to all your devices so that you can view them anywhere.

Steps to recover photos from iCloud on Mac:

Step 1: Open any web browser and go to iCloud.com (you might need to sign in).

Step 2. Tap “Photos.” Then, tap “Albums” at the top.

Step 3: Tap the Recently Deleted album.

Step 4. Select the photos you want to recover and click on “Recover”.

Other hints – Reasons that lead to Loss of Photos from Mac

Images, photos, and graphics can be easily lost on a Mac or any other device due to various reasons. Here are some common reasons for picture loss on a Mac:

How to Prevent Photo or Data Loss on Mac

There are many reasons why you might lose data on your Mac. The easiest way to protect your data is to make a backup of your Mac. Time Machine, a built-in macOS app, is a great tool that can automate the backup process for you.

Back up your Mac using Time Machine:

Step 1: Connect the external hard drive to your computer or MacBook

Step 2: Go to System Preferences > Time Machine > Select Backup Disk.

Step 3: Choose where you want to save your Time Machine backups, then click "Use Disk."

Step 4: Check the "Backup automatically" box so that Time Machine backs up everything on your Mac.

Read Also: How to Backup Mac Without Time Machine

Conclusion

The above 5 solutions can help you recover deleted photos from the Photos app, Trash, Time Machine, or Mac hard drive/storage device with Mac data recovery software. By the way, it's always advisable to back up all important data to avoid data loss due to accidental deletion or other reasons. If there's no backup, the tool in Part 1 can always be of help.