5 Ways to Recover Deleted Photos on Mac (2024 Solutions)

How to Recover Deleted Photos from a Mac

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

Quick Access to Recover Photos from Mac

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

Method 1: Recover Permanently Deleted Photos on Mac (Recommended)

Method 2: Restore Deleted Photos on Mac with the Photos App (Within 30 Days)

Method 3: How to Recover Deleted Pictures from Mac's Trash

Method 4: Recover Deleted Photos on Mac with Time Machine (If Not Emptied)

Method 5: Restore Deleted Mac Photos from iCloud

If you have deleted pictures from your Mac hard drive or any other storage media, then the photos get removed permanently. However, you can use the best Mac Photo Recovery Software to restore deleted photos on Mac. Use the first method to get more details on Mac photo recovery.

Method 1: Recover Permanently Deleted Photos on a Mac

Supports macOS 10.15~10.9

If you've lost photos from your Mac hard drive and can't get them back through the Photos app or Trash, you'll need the best photo recovery tool for Mac, such as tools Data Recovery Wizard for Mac. With it, you can easily restore 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.

Note: It's safer and more reliable to create a backup first by clicking "Disk Backup" on the left and then restoring from that image, to prevent further damage to photos in your Mac library.

Step 1: Finding the Lost Photos

Launch the “Data Recovery Wizard” on your Mac, hover the mouse over the system drive that stored your “Photos Library,” and click “Search Lost Files.”

Select the location to scan for lost Mac pictures

Step 2: Find the image from the gallery

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

Select photos from Mac library

Step 3: Recover Photos from the Gallery

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 Mac HFS+/FAT/NTFS/NTFS5 file systems on macOS and Mac OS X. Besides, it performs exceptionally well in resolving issues like:

• Restore deleted photos, music files, and other multimedia data.
• Recover recently deleted photos with their original names and folder paths.
• Retrieve photos from an SD card on Mac, Compact Flash card, USB flash drive, PC hard drive, and more.
• Get back photos from lost, overwritten, or virus-corrupted partitions on your Mac hard drive.

Read also: How to Recover Permanently Deleted Photos on iPhone

If you found this information helpful, please share it on social media to help others overcome this common challenge.

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

The Photos app is a built-in tool on your Mac that you can use to organize and manage your pictures and photos. If you accidentally delete a photo in the Photos app on your Mac, don't worry. The Photos app keeps deleted items in the Recently Deleted album for 30 days.

You can recover deleted photos directly from the Photos app:

Step 1: Open Photos.

2. In the left sidebar, select "Albums." Then double-click "Recently Deleted" (in earlier versions of Photos, you'll find "Recently Deleted" at the top).

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

4. Click “Recover” in the top right (if you just deleted a bunch of big files and don't need them, you can click “Delete All” to save space)

You can then review and reuse those photos in their original libraries within Photos.

Please provide the English content you would like translated, and I will promptly translate it into Chinese for you.

How to Find Recently Deleted Folders/Pictures on Mac

Can't locate recently deleted photos on Mac and need to recover them? Here's the solution.  Read More >>

Method 3: How to Recover Deleted Photos from Mac Trash

If you have just moved the photos to trash from your Mac hard drive or desktop, you know that you can directly empty trash and get back the deleted photos easily.

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

Step 2. Locate the pictures you want to restore and drag them to your desktop. Or, right-click on the photos and select "Put Back" to recover deleted photos from Mac Trash. The photos will be restored to their original locations.

Method 4: Restore Deleted Photos from a Mac Using Time Machine

If you have a Time Machine backup of the deleted photo, do that! Your photos, images, and pictures are safe. You can easily recover the lost photo by following these steps.

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

Step 2: Scroll along the timeline at the bottom of the Mac screen, and bottom right, 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 picture to check if it's the one you lost.

Step 3. Choose the photo you want and click "Recover" to get back the earlier version that was covered.

Method 5: Recover Deleted Mac Photos from iCloud

Most people use [iCloud](/mac-file-recovery/backup-mac-to-icloud.html) as the central repository for their digital lives, including everything from calendars to photos. The iCloud Photo Library can store all the images you take with your iDevice or upload to your Mac from a memory card, and send them to all your devices so that you can view them anywhere.

Steps to recover photos from iCloud on Mac:

Step 1. Open iCloud.com in any web browser (you may 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 “Recover”.

Chinese to English translation involves translating text from Chinese into English. This can vary from simple word-for-word conversions to more complex translations of entire paragraphs or sentences. Here are a couple of examples: Chinese: "你好，你怎么样？" English: "Hey, how are you doing?" Chinese: "那只敏捷的棕色狐狸跳过懒狗。" English: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." If you have any specific content needing translation, feel free to share it, and I'll assist with the translation.

Other reasons that lead to loss of photos from Mac

Images, photos, and graphics can be lost from a Mac or any other device due to various reasons. Here are some common causes of image loss on a Mac:

How to Avoid Losing Photos or Data on Your Mac

There are many reasons why you might lose data on your Mac. The simplest way to protect your data is by creating a backup of your Mac. Time Machine is a built-in macOS utility that handles backups automatically.

Back up your Mac data with 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 box for "Backup Automatically" to have Time Machine back up everything on your Mac on its own.

Read Also: How to Backup Mac Without Time Machine

Conclusions

The above 5 solutions help you retrieve deleted photos from Photos app, Trash, Time Machine, or Mac hard drive/storage device. By the way, it's always a good practice to back up all important data to avoid data loss due to accidental deletion or other reasons. If there's no backup, tool #1 – the Mac Data Recovery tool is always there for your assistance.

Many Mac users have already proved its efficiency. If you want to resolve your Mac file recovery issue, please share it on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and so on!

How to Recover Permanently Deleted Photos on Mac? FAQ

Still have questions about photo recovery on Mac? Check out the quick answers below to troubleshoot yourself:

1. Is it possible to recover photos that have been permanently deleted after deletion?

While it may be difficult to recover deleted pictures from the Recycle Bin on Windows or the Trash on a Mac, picture recovery software can often get them back, even after they've been permanently deleted.

2. Where do permanently deleted photos go on a Mac?

When you delete a photo, the Recently Deleted album appears in the sidebar. Open the album to see items that have been recently removed and restore them to the Photos library. On your Mac, choose Recently Deleted from the Photos app sidebar.

3. Is There Any Way to Recover Permanently Deleted Files from Mac?

Aside from dedicated data-recovery utilities, Time Machine is the only built-in tool you can rely on to restore files that have been completely deleted. Mac's backup app is called Time Machine. The selected file will be saved to your backup disk, from which you can recover lost documents, movies, and images.

4. Does Apple keep a permanent copy of photos that have been deleted?

Videos and photos you delete are kept in the Recently Deleted album for 30 days. After that, they're permanently deleted.