macOS Deleted Video Recovery: How to Recover Deleted Videos on a Mac

We all use our Macs to store important videos—whether for personal moments, work projects, or entertainment. If you accidentally deleted a video or can’t locate it, you’ve come to the right place. Over the years, this article has helped several hundred people recover deleted videos on their Macs, and we keep it updated to make sure it stays relevant and helpful in the future. Now, we’ll show you the methods that work best, so you can restore your videos too.

Try to Find Deleted Videos on Your Mac

When videos disappear from your Mac, the first place to check is the Trash—but you probably already know that. Just as a quick reminder, you can open the Trash from your Dock. If you spot your deleted videos there, simply right-click and select Put Back to restore them to their original location. Since you’ve likely already checked, let’s move on to another possible spot: the Photos Library.

Look in the Recently Deleted folder in Photos:

1. Open the Photos app from your Dock or Applications folder.
2. Scroll down the sidebar and select Recently Deleted.
3. Look for your missing video. The folder shows a countdown of days remaining before permanent deletion, which can be up to 40 days. However, in reality, they are stored for 30 days.
4. If you find the video, select it and click Recover at the top-right corner. This moves the file back to your main Library.

Got Nothing? Check Your Backups and Snapshots

If you couldn’t find your video in the Trash, Photos Library, or Finder, that’s okay. The next stop is backups. macOS offers built-in options like Time Machine and iCloud, and if you use third-party services like Google Drive or Dropbox, they can help too. But here’s the catch—they only work if they were set up before you lost your videos.

If there’s a chance backups were active, here’s what to do next.

Option A: Time Machine

Time Machine is Apple’s built-in backup tool and one of the easiest ways to recover deleted videos on a Mac—if it’s been set up beforehand. Time Machine creates regular backups of your system, and that includes all your files, so you can go “back in time” to recover what was deleted.

Here are the steps you need to follow to recover deleted videos on Mac using Time Machine:

1. Connect your Time Machine backup drive to your Mac. If you don’t have the drive with you, don’t worry—Time Machine keeps local snapshots on your Mac. These are one-day snapshots, so if your videos were deleted recently, they might still be in one of these snapshots.
2. Click the Time Machine icon in the menu bar. Select Browse Time Machine Backups to start looking through your saved versions.
3. On the right side of the screen, you’ll see a timeline with different dates. Pick a date before the video was deleted. This lets you see your files as they were on that day.
4. Navigate to the folder where your video was stored. If you remember the file name or type (like MP4 or MOV), use the search bar to narrow down your options.
5. You can press the spacebar to open Quick Look to preview it.
6. Select the video and click Restore. Time Machine will return the file to its original location on your Mac.

Option B: Cloud Backups

Another backup option is cloud storage services like iCloud, Google Drive, Google Photos, and Dropbox. These platforms can be lifesavers if you’ve been syncing your videos, as they often keep deleted files for a limited time in a Trash or Recently Deleted folder.

Here’s how to recover deleted videos from cloud backups:

1. Open the cloud storage app on your Mac or log in through a browser. Make sure you’re using the same account that’s linked to your Mac.
2. Use the search bar to look for your video by name, file type (like MP4 or MOV), or date. If you’re unsure, browse through the folders where you normally save or sync your videos.
3. Most cloud services keep deleted files for some time:
   • iCloud: Go to iCloud.com and check the Recently Deleted folder in Photos or iCloud Drive.
   • Google Drive/Photos: Open the Trash folder in the left-hand menu.
   • Dropbox: Check the Deleted Files section under Files.
4. If you find the video, select it and click Restore (or the equivalent option). The file will go back to its original cloud location, where you can download it to your Mac.
5. Right-click the file in the cloud folder and select Download or a similar option.

Most cloud services work in similar ways. The features might have different names, but the overall process—search, check the deleted files folder, restore, and download—remains the same. However, there are some differences in how long each service keeps deleted files. Here’s a quick overview:

Still Nothing? Recover Permanently Deleted Videos Using Mac Data Recovery Software

As a Mac user, you can choose from multiple data recovery software applications to recover permanently deleted videos. For the purposes of this article, we will focus on one commercial solution (Disk Drill) and one free solution (PhotoRec). Each of the two applications can reliably recover permanently deleted video files, but they provide a vastly different user experience and features.

Option A: Disk Drill

Aside from its data recovery capabilities, Disk Drill is packed with features that protect your disks and help you manage your data.

Here are just some of the reasons why we recommend Disk Drill:

• Perfectly supports macOS file systems. And also supports exFAT and FAT32 if the videos were lost from an external medium, and even NTFS if your “disk” is not formatted with macOS’s native file system.
• Disk Drill can restore video files with their original names and folder structure, as long as the file system isn’t damaged.
• If Disk Drill fails to recover data from the file system itself (when it’s badly damaged or lost), it can recover data from file signatures, it recognizes many types of files, including popular video formats like MOV, MP4, AVI, and even more specialized formats like ARI, M2TS, R3D (and many more).
• In Disk Drill, you can preview the video before recovery, so you can be sure it’s the right file.

Now that we’ve described the features and capabilities of Disk Drill, let’s move on to how to recover permanently deleted videos from Mac using the app:

1. Download the Disk Drill app from its official website.
2. Open the downloaded file and then drag the Disk Drill icon to the Applications folder to complete the installation.
3. Launch the the Disk Drill app on your Mac.
4. Grant the app access when prompted. Just enter your administrator password to continue. You might also need to adjust your security settings; if that happens, follow the on-screen instructions. It’s safe to do this—Disk Drill is completely secure, we’ve tested it ourselves.
5. Select the drive you want to check for lost videos. If you want to scan an external hard drive, make sure to plug it into your computer before launching the app so Disk Drill can detect it.
6. Click Search for lost data to start a scan. As we mentioned before, Disk Drill will run through several scan modes. It starts with a quick scan to find recently deleted files, then moves to a deep scan for files that were deleted a while ago or are on damaged/formatted drive, which analyzes every sector to reconstruct data. If needed, it also performs a partition search to locate files from lost or corrupted partitions.
7. Once the scan is complete, you can choose between Recover All to restore everything Disk Drill found or Review Found Items to select specific files. If you’re eager to check results before the scan finishes, you can click Review Found Items while the scan is still running to preview and recover files as they appear.
8. Since we’re after video files, you can select the Videos category, and Disk Drill will display all the videos it found. As you hover over the file names, you’ll notice an 👁️‍🗨️ eye icon next to each one. Click it to preview the video and confirm it’s the file you’re looking for.
9. Once you’ve found and selected the deleted video file, click Recover.
10. Choose the folder destination where you want to place the recovered file.

Disk Drill’s free version also offers many additional useful abilities, such as:

Option B: PhotoRec

Even though this data recovery software is named PhotoRec, it can recover more than just photos, and it can perform everything from SD card recovery to hard drive recovery. The only catch is you need to be comfortable with Terminal because the application doesn’t have a graphical user interface.

Here are some of the things we like about PhotoRec:

• 💸 It’s completely free. No need to pay to fully enjoy its features.
• 🔄 It can recover an unlimited number of files.
• 🗂️ It can recover over 400 file types including video formats like AVI, MOV, MKV, MP4, 3GP, 3G2, WMV, ASF, FLV, SWF, MPG, RM.

The command-line interface in PhotoRec may feel tricky at first, but with a bit of practice, you’ll get the hang of it. Unfortunately, that’s not the only downside. Unlike Disk Drill, which offers multiple scan modes, PhotoRec relies solely on a signature scan mode. This approach searches for specific file signatures to recover files but ignores file names and original folder structures. Combined with the lack of a preview feature, you’ll likely spend a lot of time manually sifting through its findings. That’s why we rarely rely on PhotoRec in real-world situations.

Here’s how to recover lost video files using PhotoRec on Mac:

1. Install PhotoRec using Homebrew (PhotoRec is included in the TestDisk package): brew install testdisk
2. Launch Terminal, type photorec, and press Return.
3. Use your arrow keys to select the drive you want to scan and retrieve the lost video files.
4. Locate the Proceed option by pressing the arrow keys to continue. You will be taken to a new screen where you will see your selected drive.
5. View the lost files by selecting the option File Opt.
6. Recover all your files by pressing S on your keyboard. Keep in mind that if you choose to retrieve all, the recovery process will take time.
7. Recover specific files by scrolling down until you see the file name, and hitting spacebar to select the file. Press B to save the settings, then press Enter twice to go back to the previous menu.
8. Press the Arrow Up key to select the No Partition option which scans the whole disk. Then go to the Search option by pressing the Left key and Enter. Choose Other if you are not using an ext file system.
9. Choose your destination folder from the list that will appear on your screen. Confirm your selection by pressing the C key.
10. Wait for the recovery process to finish. This will take a while depending on how heavy the file is. “Recovery Completed” will appear on the screen to confirm that the process is completed.
11. Exit the program.

Recovered Deleted Video But It Seems Corrupted or Won’t Play? Try Fixing It

Sometimes, recovery is a success, but when you try to play the video, it doesn’t work or seems corrupted. This can happen if parts of the file were overwritten and the video is incomplete, which makes video players struggle with playback. Luckily, there are a few ways to try and repair the file. Here are two methods we often use.

Option A: Clever Online Video Repair

One option we found to often be successful with corrupted videos is the online service Clever Online Video Repair. Developed by CleverFiles—the same team behind Disk Drill—this tool stands out among similar video repair options due to its generous features. It supports a wide range of video formats (MP4, MOV, 3GP, 3G2, M4V, FLV, and GIFV), and can repair video files as large as 5 GB, which is impressive compared to its competitors, who usually offer no more than 500 MB.

To use Clever Online Video Repair, all you need is an internet connection and a web browser. Here’s a quick guide to get you started:

1. Go to the Clever Online Video Repair website.
2. Click the Upload File button and select the corrupted video file from your computer.
3. Upload a healthy video file recorded in the same format and with the same settings (resolution, frame rate, etc.) as the corrupted video, you can upload it alongside the corrupted file. This allows the service to extract the necessary information from the healthy video to restore the damaged file.
4. Now create an account or sign in.
5. Once the files are uploaded, the tool will automatically detect the problem and begin the repair process. The repair time will vary depending on the file size and the severity of the corruption.
6. After the repair is complete, you’ll be prompted to download the fixed video. You can then check it to confirm that the issue has been resolved.

Clever Online Video Repair doesn’t require any special software or complicated steps—just upload, repair, and download. From our experience, the repair process is usually pretty quick, and it often takes longer to upload the file than to actually fix it. Of course, the time will depend on your ISP upload speeds and the size of the video, but overall, it’s a fast and easy way to repair corrupted videos.

Option B: VLC Media Player

Another fix you can try is VLC Media Player. You’ve probably heard of it—it’s one of the most popular free media players out there, and it comes with a handy feature that can attempt to fix damaged or incomplete video files. While this feature is designed for AVI files, you can still use it with other video formats. Simply change the file extension to .avi, and VLC will try to repair the video when you open it. It doesn’t always work, but it’s definitely worth a shot.

Here’s how to use VLC to try and fix your video:

1. If you don’t already have it, download VLC Media Player from the official website and install it on your Mac.
2. Find your corrupted video file and change its file extension to .avi. For example, if your file is video.mp4, rename it to video.avi.
3. Launch VLC and open the renamed file. If the video has minor corruption, VLC might automatically attempt to repair it.
4. If the video still won’t play, go to Tools > Preferences in the VLC menu. In the Input/Codecs tab, find the Damaged or Incomplete AVI File setting and select Always Fix. Save the changes and try to reopen the video.

Don’t Want to Go DIY? You MacBook Is Dead? Contact Data Recovery Service

We have seen many successfully recovered videos with the methods we covered above (including us). However, if you don’t want to do it yourself, or if your MacBook is completely unresponsive and you can’t even boot it up to get those videos off of it, consider professional help. Data recovery services specialize in retrieving data from damaged, corrupted, or dead devices, and they have the tools and expertise to handle situations that DIY methods can’t fix.

Most services won’t charge you unless they manage to get your video files back, so you have nothing to lose.

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