Summary :

Step 2: Select 'Recover Files' option from the main screen. To retrieve deleted files select 'Recover Deleted Files' option from the screen that is shown in Figure 2 and proceed. Select retrieve Deleted Files. Step 3: Select the drive from which you want to retrieve deleted files/folders and then click on 'Next'. Recover Deleted Files Using Mac Terminal. Enter the “cd.Trash” command to navigate to the Trash folder. Enter the “ls” command to list all files in the Trash folder. Type “mv xxx.xxx /Desktop/” to move a file to the Desktop folder. Make sure to replace xxx.xxx with the actual name of the file.

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.

The quick scan starts firstly to find the deleted files and then deep scan searches thoroughly for more files. Filter the retrieved files by path or type, preview all recoverable data, and select the exact file that you wish to recover. Click 'Recover' and store the recovered data to a new drive.

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

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

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.

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

If you have or once ran into such a problem, here you will find 4 different ways to recover trash on mac, even the trash bin is emptied.

Can I Recover Emptied Trash on Mac?

Yes, you can.

Usually, when you move files to Trash, they are not permanently deleted. You can easily restore them by putting back. But if you empty the Trash bin, are the files gone for good?

No! In fact, the deleted files still remain on your Mac hard drive. When you permanently delete files or empty the Trash, you only lose their directory entries. That means you are not allowed to access or view them in normal way. And the spaces of trashed files are marked as free and can be occupied by new files you add. Once overwritten by new data, the deleted files can become unrecoverable.

So stop working with the hard drive where files were deleted to avoid overwritten. It is also crucial to use a powerful Mac Trash recovery tool to find and recover all deleted files from emptied Trash before they’re truly gone.

The Best Mac Trash Recovery Software 2021

Cisdem Data Recovery can be your first option when it comes to recover emptied trash on Mac. Due to its powerful recovery ability, fast scan speed and easy to use, it is highly evaluated and recommended by users and tech authorities.

This Mac trash recovery tool is 100% safe for you to recover files from Trash on Mac running macOS 10.12 or above. It can recover files in 200+ formats, restore files lost under different situations, no matter from internal hard drive or external media/sd card storage device.

Why Cisdem is picked as the Best Mac Trash Recovery Software?

1. Deal with various data loss from Trash

• Accidentally or mistakenly deleted files from Trash bin.
• Tap “Empty Trash” button from the Trash window.
• Press Command + Shift + Delete keys to delete files from Trash.
• Press Command + Option + Shift + Delete to empty Trash without warning.
• Right click the Trash icon in Dock and select “Empty Trash” or “Secure Empty Trash”.
• Use third-party data erase tool to erase the Trash files.

2. Recover 200+ types of files in mac Trash

Virtually all files in popular formats can be recovered by Cisdem, including photos, music, videos, archives, emails, folders, raw file types. And for those Apple-proprietary formats, such as Keynote, Pages, Numbers, Preview PDF, etc., Cisdem still works.

3. Offer 5 recovery modes

Cisdem offers 5 recovery modes, including Basic, Trash, Formatted Drive, External Devices and Advanced, which not only allows users to fast scan files in emptied trash, but also to do the recovery according to practical needs. Even if the recovery result under a specific mode disappear you, you can try the Advanced more for better result.

4. Excellent user experience

• Easy to use;
• Pause and resume scanning;
• Accurately categorize the files into folders;
• Preview files before recovery;

5. Fast and highly successful recovery

Cisdem can process the recovery extremely fast and well. It may dig out those deleted files hidden deep in your trash bin. For the files recovered by Cisdem, they can be opened and re-write for further use.

How to Utilize the Best Mac Trash Recovery Software?

Step 1Run Cisdem Data Recovery on your mac.

Download and install Cisdem Data Recovery on your mac, then launch the program for scanning.

Step 2Choose Trash Recovery mode.

Also, you can try the Advanced Data Recovery mode later if you want a better recovery result.

Step 3Choose Internal> Mac hard drive to start scanning.

You may have installed different macOS versions on your mac, choose the one where you want to recover trash file. Once ready, click “Scan”.

Step 4Preview the found file in mac trash.

After the scanning, all the files will be categorized in different folders on the left column. Select the files according to type and select each file to preview.

Step 5Recover deleted files from emptied trash on mac.

Once select all trash files, click “Recover” to get all the files from emptied trash back to your mac. If you want to restore the trash files to original location, please choose the output path accordingly.

How to Recover Emptied Trash Mac Free (3 Ways)?

Like many other users new to this recovery issue, you may be looking for a free way to recover emptied trash on mac. And luckily, we do have free solutions to do a mac trash recovery without installing a 3rd party software, but the premise is, you have backed up the trash files in your external hard drive or online storage services.

#1 Recover Emptied Mac from Time Machine

If you have turned on Time Machine for backup, then there are possibilities to recover emptied Trash on Mac from Time Machine.

• Step1. Click Time Machine in the menu bar and select “Enter Time Machine”.
• Step2. Then a window pops up. And you will see all your backup files. You can use the timeline or onscreen up and down arrows to locate the files you need.
• Step3. Select the files you want to restore and tap “Restore” to restore from Time Machine.

#2 Recover Trash Mac from iCloud

If you set up iCloud Drive on your Mac and store your files to it, the files will be synced with your iCloud account. So you may find a backup of your Trashed file in iCloud.

• Step1. Sign into icloud.com with your Apple ID and password on mac.
• Step 2. Select the files that you emptied in your trash bin, click the “Download” icon to save the selected files to your mac.

For files you can not find in your iCloud Drive, go to Settings>Advanced>Restore Files, choose the files to restore, then download to your mac.

#3 Recover Trash on Mac from Google Drive

It is much likely that you are a Google user and benefit a lot from using the Google Drive service. If you have a habit to back up files in Google Drive, it would be possible for you to do a free mac trash recovery.

• Step 1. Login into your Google account;
• Step 2. Go to Google Drive;
• Step 3. Right click on the file you want to recover from emptied trash bin, choose “Download”;
• Step 4. Choose output folder as needed to save the files.

For files you cannot find in Google Drive, go to Trash, then find the files and right click to “Restore”.

In fact, as you can see, for any important files that you have accidently deleted in your trash bin, if there is a backup in online storage service, email box, file transfer programs, there is a way to recover them back in similar way.

How Does www.recovering-deleted-files.net Help Recover Mac Trash?

Undelete Files Mac Free

When studying how to recover trash on mac, I realized that many users showed a great interest in the website www.recovering-deleted-files.net. I thought it offered an online, free solution to do mac trash recovery, but it is not.

www.recovering-deleted-files.net is a platform to offer various data recovery and repair tools for Mac, Windows, iPhone and Android. But it doesn’t own or develop these programs, it promote for those tools. The Mac Data Recovery recommended from this website are quite similar to Cisdem’s, allowing users to recover deleted or lost files in Trash, from internal or external device. So, if you want to utilize this website to recover your emptied trash, you will have to download a 3rd party software.

Final Words

How Do I Recover Deleted Files On My Mac For Free

The easiest way to recover emptied trash on mac is absolutely to use the best Mac Trash Data Recovery software---Cisdem, it guarantees a high recovery rate. And for sure, if you want to make the emptied trash recovery easier, you’e better have a good habit to back up files, especially those important file onto online storage service or hard drive.