6 Ways to Recover Emptied Trash on Mac for Free or Without Software

All the files that moved to trash will stay in your Mac Trash bin and you can turn back to cancel the deleting by putting them back at anytime. Even if you accidentally emptied Trash bin, as long as we take actions quickly, it is still possible to recover the emptied Trash bin on your Mac. 

This article outlines 6 ways on how to recover emptied or deleted Trash on Mac, for free, even without using any 3rd party software. 

QUICK ANSWER

Recovering emptied Trash bin is not a easy task, even though you can restore without software, you have to use a backup. Using data recovery software is the best bet, like Cisdem, which is neither expensive nor complex.

JUMP TO THE CONTENTS

 Cisdem Data Recovery for Mac

Recover Emptied Trash Files in 200+ Formats

• Recover recently deleted, permanently deleted, formatted, trash emptied files
• Restore files from both Mac internal and external storage devices
• Repair damaged videos in different formats
• Use both quick scan and deep scan to find the most files from emptied Trash
• Support recovery of 200+ files: video, audio, image, document, archive, email, etc.
• Quickly search files with filter tools basing on keyword, file size, date created or modified
• Preview files before recovery
• Recover files to local drive or Cloud (iCloud, Dropbox, OneDrive, GoogleDrive, pCloud, Box)

Free Download macOS 10.9 or later

Can You 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 erased 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, and take quick actions to recover the files, this is just why a dedicated data recovery program is high recommended because of high recovery rate.

Can you Recover Emptied Trash Through Mac Terminal??

No!

We noticed that many bloggers suggested users to recover emptied Trash using Terminal, running commands on your Mac to get trashed files back to original location. Well, this is very misleading, Terminal only allows recovering deleted files that you have moved to Trash bin, but cannot restore files from emptied Trash. In other words, Terminal just puts deleted files from Trash back to original storage path, it cannot restore permanently deleted files. 

Can you Recover Emptied Trash with Undo Command?

No!

We may know that Mac computer keeps track of every action you perform, allowing users to undo recent changes to files. Don’t be deceived by it. The Undo command (or Command+Z) won’t work if you need to reverse the emptied/deleted Trash and cancel the permanent removal of trashed files.

How to Successfully Recover All Deleted Files from An Emptied Trash on Mac?

To recover deleted files from emptied Trash bin on Mac, one of the most important issues to address is how many files can be brought back. To get the highest recovery rate, it makes sense to use a dedicated data recovery tool designed for Mac users, which avoids recovering files in vain.

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 even tech authorities. Cisdem can be used to recover deleted files in different scenarios:

• 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”.
• Enable the "Remove items from the Trash after 30 days" option in Finder Preferences.
• Use third-party data erase tool to erase the Trash files.

This Mac trash recovery tool is 100% safe to use on Mac running macOS 10.9 or above. It can recover nearly all deleted files from your Trash, Mac hard drive, even external storage devices. By supporting files in 200+ formats, like video, audio, photo, this tool helps you recover all types of file. Also, it supports repairing damaged videos.

Like many other users new to this recovery issue, you may be looking for a possible way to recover emptied Trash on Mac for free. And luckily, we do have solutions to do so.

Part 1. How to Recover Emptied Trash on Mac Without Software Free?

The premise of adopting this option without downloading any 3-rd party software is, you have backed up the Trash files in your external hard drive or online storage services. For your reference, 3 kinds of backup platforms will be explored as following.

Option 1. Recover Emptied Mac from Time Machine

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

Steps to recover emptied Trash without installing software on Mac

• Step 1. Click Time Machine in the menu bar and select “Enter Time Machine”.
• Step 2. 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.
• Step 3. Select the files you want to restore and tap “Restore” to restore from Time Machine. 

Option 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. 

Steps to recover Mac files from emptied Trash without software

• Step 1. Sign into icloud.com with your Apple ID and password on Mac.
• Step 2. Choose iCloud Drive.
• Step 3. 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 iCloud Drive Settingshomepage > Data Recovery > Restore Files, choose the files to restore, then download them to your Mac.

Option 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.

Steps to recover emptied Mac Trash bin without software

• 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 accidentally deleted in your Trash bin, if there is a backup in online storage service, email box, file transfer programs, there is always a way to recover them back in similar way.

Part 2. How to Recover Emptied Trash on Mac with Software Free?

Don’t have a backup or need some time to evaluate Cisdem Data Recovery? Here is the free solution with free software.

Speaking of the best free Mac data recovery program, PhotoRec stands above others all, and has done for a long time. This open source software is dedicated in recovering photos from external and internal storage devices, though it is not fully features, it does more than just restoring photos, it can also recover videos, audios, documents and so on.

The interface is not user-friendly, same as other command-based programs, it is difficult to use. But it is worth spending some time to get familiar with it, since it is free, and can practically recover emptied Trash files.

Steps to recover emptied Trash on Mac for free

1. Download PhotoRec from https://www.cgsecurity.org/, install it on your Mac.
2. Select the disk where your Trash bin located.
3. Select the partition.
4. Select the file system where your trashed files stored.
5. Choose output folder to store the recovered files.
6. Start the recovery process and check the retrieved files in the output folder.

Last Trick: Recover Items from Emptied Trash Mac with Data Recovery Service

So far, once sadly you don’t succeed to perform the Mac Trash recovery, the end wit to recover emptied Mac Trash is contacting data recovery service center. When the Trash files are detected to be recoverable, restoring data from an emptied Trash with a data recovery service must be the most expensive one among all the recovery solutions, but in some specific cases it’s the most trustworthy choice.

Just search online to pick a reliable data recovery service, contact it for a recovery estimate, then ship your Mac hard drive to the recovery center, and wait for the technicians to retrieve your Trash files with specialized software or hardware.

Final Words

If you’ve tried to recover emptied Trash files with backup and your files are still not back, talk or visit a local data recovery expert, by searching “data recovery services near me” online, you will get a list of local services to recover your files on Mac. 

But if you feel unnecessary to do this, the easiest way to recover emptied Trash on Mac is absolutely to use the best Mac Trash Data Recovery software --- Cisdem, which guarantees a high recovery rate.