Losing precious pictures from your Mac is a very painful situation. When you accidentally delete any picture from your device or lost photos due to formatting, virus attacks, or any other reason, there’s no need to panic. There are several Mac recovery methods available online that you can try to recover recently deleted or missing Mac photos.
Before you proceed with these Mac photos recovery methods, it is important to find the exact cause for your photo loss issues. Here, in this article, we will provide you with how to recover photos from Mac. Keep reading this article to learn these methods and get your photos disappeared from your Macbook Pro or any other MacOS device back.
Why Pictures on Mac Get Disappeared?
If your Mac photos from albums disappeared, there can be several reasons responsible for the issue. Some main causes for the photo loss issues are:
- Accidental deletion: You may have deleted important pictures from your Mac by mistake. Usually, such a situation arises when you deleted your pictures while deleting any other file or folder from it.
- Formatting: When you format the storage device of your Mac, it deletes all the files from it, including your precious pictures. To avoid such a situation, it is important to create proper backup of your important files before you proceed with the formatting.
- Software/Hardware issues: Sometimes, software glitches such as errors during file transfers, software crashes, etc. and hardware failures, like malfunctioning hard drives or other storage devices inadvertently lead to file missing issues.
- Virus or Malware: Malicious software such as viruses or malware can potentially corrupt or delete your files, including important pictures on your Mac.
Quick Methods to Restore Missing or Hidden Pictures on Mac
Now that you are familiar with the causes for the deletion or missing pictures on your MacOS devices, it’s time to apply methods to get them back. In this part of the blog, we will help you restore this folder on your device:
Method 01: Use Spotlight Search to Discover Hidden Photos
You can use Mac’s in-built Spotlight option to search the missing files and folders on your device. If you have accidentally moved the picture from its original location to another location or folder, then the Spotlight feature will help you to access such pictures. Go through the following steps to know how to use Spotlight on Mac:
- Firstly, click a ‘magnifying glass’ shaped icon located on the top-right corner of your screen and then launch Spotlight.
- Now, enter the exact name or a few keywords of your file that you need to restore.
- After searching for that particular image, Spotlight displays the related results which you can open, drag, or save on your desktop. However, if you have accidentally deleted files from Spotlight, go to the Trash or Bin folder to access them.
Method 02: Recover Missing Photos on Mac Using Finder
If you fail to access recently deleted or missing Mac photos using Spotlight search, then you can use the MacOS Finder tool to unhide your pictures. Mac’s Finder is the default file manager which allows you to retrieve hidden files using the below-given steps:
- Click the ‘Finder’ option in the Dock. Then, select and launch the ‘Macintosh HD’ folder.
- Now, keep pressing the ‘Command’ + ‘Shift’ + ‘.’ keys till all the missing files appear on your screen.
- Once you locate the disappeared photos on your Mac, unhide them and save them at the desired storage location.
- After saving the required files back to your device, press the ‘Command’ + ‘Shift’ + ‘.’ keys once again to hide the remaining files.
Method 03: Turn Off iCloud Drive
Enabling the iCloud backup option on your device allows you to sync all your Mac data anywhere on Apple devices and platforms. When you enable the synchronization of the ‘Desktop & Documents’ folder, then both these folders automatically move to the iCloud section in the Finder. To resolve this issue, you need to turn off the iCloud drive. For this, go through the following steps:
- Navigate to the Apple menu and tap the ‘System Preferences’ option.
- Select ‘iCloud’ and then click “Options” located next to “iCloud Drive“.
- Untick the checkbox next to the ‘Desktop & Documents Folders’ option and press on ‘Done’.
Method 04: Use Mac Photo Recovery Software
If you fail to recover disappeared Mac photos from albums using the above recovery methods, it’s time to use a professional photo recovery software for mac. There are several such recovery software programs available online which you can use to get access to recently deleted or missing Mac Photos. Stellar Photo Recovery is an all-in-one recovery tool which allows you to recover your lost files on your Mac systems in a few simple clicks. The software is mainly known for its amazing features like a user-friendly interface and compatibility with both Windows and MacOS devices.
Checkout the following steps to know how to recover missing or deleted photos from Mac using the Stellar Photo Recovery tool:
- First, download and install the Stellar Photo Recovery tool on your device and then launch it.
- Select the storage location or drive from where you need to recover deleted media files and then click the Scan button.
- Wait till the scanning process gets completed. Then preview the recoverable files and select the required photos and then click the Recover button to save them at the desired storage location.
Wrapping Up:
You can easily go through the aforementioned steps to know how to recover missing or disappeared photos from Mac. These methods will surely help you to restore those photos in no time. However, if the manual methods anyhow fail to recover your missing pictures, you can use the professional Stellar Photo Recovery tool which is the best and quick method to retrieve photos which disappeared suddenly from your Mac.
