Open Trash by clicking on its icon, located on the right side or bottom of the Dock.īecause you may have only a limited amount of time to act, Trash is the first place you need to check whenever you need to recover deleted files on Mac.

If you don’t see the icon, you can also open Trash by entering the following command in a Terminal window: open.

Go through Trash and look for the files you want to undelete.

When you find them, select them by either pressing and holding the command key and then clicking the files or by holding the left mouse click and dragging the cursor around them.

Click on any of the selected files, hold the click, and drag your mouse to another folder or your desktop.

As soon as you release the mouse, the files will be moved to the destination.

Solution #2: Restore Deleted Files That Are No Longer in Trash via Backup If you change your mind halfway through, you can simply move the files back to Trash. What if you can’t recover files from Trash on Mac because they’re no longer there? Does it mean the files are gone for good? Fortunately, it doesn’t. As long as you have a backup, you should be able to recover them in no time.ĭon’t have a backup? Then stop everything you’re doing and read the third solution described in this article. There’s a good chance that you’ll be able to restore all deleted files even without a backup, but you need to hurry up and start the recovery before they become overwritten. Since Mac OS X Leopard, Mac users can backup and recover files using Time Machine. This innovative backup software application distributed as part of macOS, and its purpose is to automatically backup all files users have on their system.īecause Time Machine doesn’t back up the Trash folder, you can’t use it to recover deleted Trash on Mac. However, you can use it to recover deleted files from whichever location they were before. Connect your Time Machine backup disk if it’s not already connected to your Mac.Open the folder that contained the deleted files.

For example, if the files were in your Documents folder, open Finder and select Documents from the sidebar on the left.

Disk drill trash recovery