Ever deleted photos from Recently Deleted folder in Photos app or emptied the Trash bin on your Mac, only to find you’ve deleted them by mistake? We’ve all been there, and start thinking about how to recover permanently deleted photos on a MacBook (Air, Pro), iMac, Mac.
The really good news is that restoring permanently deleted photos on Mac requires minimal effort and time. The most important part is to consider the tool you should use, even though you want to recover deleted photos on Mac for free.
Cisdem Data Recovery for Mac
Free Download macOS 10.9 or later
Yes, it is possible.
When we permanently delete photos or other files in Mac Trash, it doesn’t mean that the files are completely and instantaneously erased. We just lost the portal to access to your files, which become invisible but are still stored on your Mac.
Deleting files can be done and finished in a flash, but erasing data, especially a large amount of data, takes much longer time to end, which may adversely impact your Mac’s performance and productivity. Therefore, when permanently deleting photos or other files on Mac, Mac just marks the location where your photos were saved as available to add new files. If there are new files to be added, your deleted Photos will be overwritten and may be gone forever, that’s why stopping writing to your Mac is required if you want to recover permanently deleted photos on a Mac.
Wondering if Apple builds in a tool that helps users restore permanently deleted photos? While it might not be obvious, Macs all come with 2 tools to backup and recover photos: Time Machine for local backup and recovery, iCloud for cloud backup and recovery.
But whether Apple can restore the permanently deleted photos depends on how you set up these 2 tools on your Mac. If you’ve enabled Time Machine backup before deleting the photos, or disabled iCloud sync before the photos deletion, you will be able to restore the deleted photos even after being permanently deleted on Apple Macs.
We well understand that your photos have been permanently deleted from your Photos or iPhoto app on Mac, and it seems that there is no need to check your Trash bin. But you are recommended to do so, maybe you can just find that your deleted photos lying there in Trash bin with a different file name. If there is no surprise, there are 4 proven ways to recover permanently deleted photos on your Mac, even you’ve upgraded the system to the latest Sequoia.
If you are looking for an easy and quick solution for Mac photos recovery, use a professional data recovery program.
Cisdem Data Recovery is the best option, it allows Mac users recovering deleted photos directly from Photos app, from Mac internal and external storage device, also from iCloud.
Cisdem can detect and recover permanently deleted files such as photos (PNG, JPG, GIF, PSD, BMP, RAW, etc.), music files (ACC, MP3, M4A, FLAC, etc.), movies (DV, MKV, MOV, etc.), archives (ZIP, TAR, RAR, 7Z, etc.), emails and other files on Mac, external hard drive, USB flash drive, SD card and other storage devices. It works for almost all data loss scenarios: Empty the Trash, Permanently delete photos from iPhoto or Photos app, Upgrade your macOS, Format your drive by mistake…
Main Features of Cisdem Data Recovery for Mac
Free Download macOS 10.9 or later 
There are 2 ways for Cisdem to scan and recover a deleted file, from Type or Path. If you’ve permanently deleted some photos from the Photos app and want to recover, you can go to Path for quickest Mac photos recovery.
Free Download macOS 10.9 or later
If you’ve backed up the photos in iCloud and disabled the syncing, you can also use Cisdem iCloud recovery mode to restore the permanently deleted photos on your Mac.
If you have only several photos deleted or just start out with data recovering, there are free tools or solutions allow you to restore the permanently deleted photos on Mac. Without having to invest in an data recovery program, these solutions restore your files with a backup, or without any backup.
Time Machine is the backup application to save your files to an external storage device in case of hardware failure, malware attack, human errors or other accidents. It can be set up to backup photos, videos, documents, system files and so on automatically & regularly. If there is any data loss, you can get the files back from your Time Machine backup effortlessly. The photos will be restored to their original locations on your Mac’s hard drive.
In the case that you have backed up the permanently deleted photos on iCloud and didn’t enable the sync feature, you can recover the Mac photos from iCloud via re-downloading. This is also very useful to recover recently deleted photos that are missing on your Mac.
Also, we have freeware to restore your photos, it is PhotoRec. This data recovery freeware restores deleted photos, audios, videos, documents and others from both internal and external hard disk, it supports common file systems like FAT, NTFS and exFAT.
When you launch it on your Mac, it will open a Terminal window, where you can use Arrow keys to select options and press Enter for next step, based on the instructions offered on the interface. If you don’t feel confident with Terminal, then you can just ignore this tool. In some cases such as RAW photos recovery, PhotoRec won’t completely recover a file, which means you may lose a little bit of data.
In the case that you are not sure if the photos are permanently deleted or just missing from your Mac, there are 3 ways to recover the deleted photos.
When you are trying to restore the deleted photos from Photos app, you should check the Recently Deleted folder from the app. And you should go to the right library if you have multiple.
For photos that are not saved in the photos library, if they are deleted, check the Trash bin for recovery.
If the photos are deleted from your iCloud account, you can log in and use the Data Recovery tool to restore.
1. What are permanently deleted photos on Mac?
Permanently deleted photos, are the photos that completely removed from a device and cannot be found in Recently Deleted folder or Trash bin on your Mac. They are deleted from the file directories and become inaccessible, unless you scan and restore them using a professional data recovery program. These include:
2. Recently deleted photos on Mac not showing? How to find them?
If you’ve deleted the photos from Photos app, go to Recently Deleted folder. If you’ve moved them to the Trash bin, you can find the deleted photos via name, volume, kind, date created, etc, also you can enter keyword in the search box.
If you cannot locate the deleted photos in Trash, initiate the spotlight tool by pressing Command + F, then search the file on this Mac.
If none of the methods works, check back Cisdem Data Recovery to scan and restore your files.
3. Does iCloud backup include permanently deleted photos?
If the syncing feature is enabled in iCloud app on your Mac, when you permanently delete a photo from Mac, the backup file will be also removed from your iCloud account. But if you paused or disabled the syncing before deleting the photos, yes, the iCloud backup still include the permanently deleted photos and you can re-download to your Mac.
If you have a backup of the deleted photos, Apple’s Time Machine is helpful. But if you don’t, go for a trial version of the Cisdem Data Recovery program. Download, install and launch it on your MacBook, iMac, or Mac Pro/mini, it will restore your permanently deleted photos without a hassle!
Connie Yu has been a columnist in the field of data recovery since 2011. She studied a lot of data loss situations and tested repeatedly to find a feasible solution tailored for each case. And her solutions are always updated to fix problems from the newest systems, devices and apps.
Sidney Winn
It is lucky for me to have a Time Machine backup. Though it requires a large-capacity drive to back up files on Mac, it is useful, especially when you lost some important files.
Renaud
I used both PhotoRec and Cisdem Data Recovery to recover my lost travel photos. I love Cisdem better. Although PhotoRec takes no money, it is much more difficult to operate in recovery process compared with Cisdem.