How to Recover Accidentally Emptied Trash on Mac

Your Mac’s Trash is a great feature that temporarily stores deleted files and folders, enabling you to recover them quickly with a few clicks if you decide you need them back. But what about if you emptied the Trash by mistake before realizing you had deleted some important docs or irreplaceable photos? Are they gone for good?

How Does Trash Work on Mac?

We believe everyone understands the purpose of the Trash bin. Apple developers built the Trash facility into the Mac operating system to address the common issue of users accidentally deleting important files or folders. It’s very easy to inadvertently hit the wrong button or highlight the wrong item and delete something you cannot afford to lose. You should have the option to change your mind and retrieve them if needed, right?

When you or an application deletes an item on your Mac, it is not physically removed from your hard drive. Instead, it’s moved to a special folder called the Trash. Items are held in the Trash for a set period (usually 30 days) or until it reaches its storage limit. After this time, they are ‘permanently’ erased. Of course, you can also manually empty the Trash at any time.

You can easily restore files from the Trash on your Mac before it is emptied. Just open the Trash folder by clicking on the wastebasket icon in your Mac’s dock. Right-click on the item you want to restore and select Put Back. The item will be recovered to its original location on your Mac.

But what to do if that option is no longer available? Read on.

Is it Possible to Restore Mac’s Trash After it is Emptied?

Yes, it is possible to restore Trash on a Mac after you empty the Bin. Emptying the Trash essentially instructs the macOS to permanently delete all files and folders in the Bin. However, these items are not immediately erased from your Mac’s hard drive or the external storage media where they were originally located.

In simpler terms, the logical links that make the file accessible to the OS are deleted, but the data remains on the storage device. The space occupied by the files that were in the Trash is marked as available for future use by the operating system. Data will eventually be overwritten by new information based on the needs of the OS.

Until the data has been overwritten, it can be recovered by specialized data recovery software. This software repairs the deleted logical links and makes the files and folders available to the operating system and applications. Once the files have been overwritten, they can only be recovered if you have backed them up.

How to Recover Emptied Trash on Mac with Software

Let’s look at how to recover accidentally emptied Trash on a Mac using two different types of software solutions. One provides a user-friendly interface that simplifies data recovery and enables anyone to successfully recover emptied Trash on a Mac. The other is a command-line program that requires more extensive technical expertise to use effectively.

Let me add some technical details about the solutions mentioned below. Many modern data recovery programs offer a “Quick Scan” mode. This mode is ideal for situations where you’ve emptied the Trash or deleted data using the rm command. It scans the device’s file system and recovers data based on saved records, provided the relevant file information hasn’t been corrupted or overwritten. In this mode, software often recovers data with original file names, folder structure, and regardless of file format. If the Quick Scan fails, the software usually utilizes more complex algorithms based on file types (unique file signatures). However, some programs, including the one we’ll discuss today (PhotoRec), rely solely on this latter method. This means they cannot recover file metadata, and the number of supported file types becomes crucial.

Option A: Disk Drill

The following procedure demonstrates how to use Disk Drill to recover files when you have emptied the Trash by mistake or simply need to recover any lost or deleted data on your Mac or any other external storage device.

1. Download and install Disk Drill for Mac on a separate disk or device from the one where you deleted your files. This is to protect the recoverable data from being overwritten when downloading and installing the application.
2. Launch Disk Drill and select the disk that contains the deleted data.
3. Click the Search for lost data button to start scanning for recoverable items.
4. Preview the found files and select those you want to recover.
5. Click the Recover button to start the recovery. You will be prompted to supply a safe location where the recovered files will be stored. Don’t use the disk you are recovering for this purpose.
6. Click OK after providing the location and let the software complete the recovery.

Option B: PhotoRec

The following overview of how to recover Trash on a Mac with PhotoRec illustrates the potential difficulties users may face with this software.

• You need to install the software using /bin/bash in Terminal. Some users may not be familiar with this procedure.
• The software provides a rudimentary command-line interface that is navigated with arrow keys and has not been updated since 2019.
• Files are recovered under generic filenames which complicate and slow down the recovery effort.

Here’s a step-by-step walkthrough of a PhotoRec recovery.

1. Download, install, and launch PhotoRec.
2. Select the disk that contained the deleted data.
3. Choose the partition containing the files you need to recover.
4. Select the PhotoRec options to be used for this recovery.
5. Choose the files and file type to be recovered.
6. Carve a partition to store the recovered files.
7. Choose where to save the recovered data.
8. Perform the recovery.

How to Recover Emptied Trash on Mac Without Software

Now let’s look at some ways to restore Trash on a Mac without software.

Method 1: Check Your Backups

If you regularly back up your Mac, you may be able to use the backup media to recover an emptied Trash bin. The key here is having the deleted files contained in your backup. New or recently modified data may not have been captured in your backups. Here are some options for recovering from backups that do contain the data that has been emptied from the Trash.

Method 2: Contact a Data Recovery Service

Data recovery services are great for addressing issues with damaged storage devices or failed hard drives. If you have simply emptied the Trash by mistake on your Mac, the technical skills of the data recovery center may not provide any additional value.

Either the files are there and can be recovered with DIY software or they have been overwritten and cannot be recovered except with a backup. You can save time and money by performing the recovery yourself using a reliable software solution.

FAQ

Conclusion

There are multiple methods of restoring the files from an accidentally emptied Trash on a Mac. Data recovery software offers the most efficient recovery path and does not rely on previously created backups that may not contain recently updated items. That does not minimize the importance of regularly backing up your Mac.

It is vitally important that you stop using the device until you have recovered the deleted items or you risk overwriting the information you wish to retrieve. You should get in the habit of checking the Trash before emptying it to make sure nothing important slipped by. If you do accidentally empty your Mac’s Trash, recovery software should be able to get it back for you.