Recover photos deleted from your Mac or iPhone
Short answer
If the photos were on your Mac or iPhone itself, don’t reach for a recovery app — reach for your backups. The internal drive is encrypted and clears deleted files almost immediately, so scanning can’t find them. Instead, check Recently Deleted in Photos, the Trash, Time Machine, and iCloud, in that order.
Why a recovery app can’t help here
Shotback and tools like it work by reading a card or drive block by block and rebuilding files from the raw data left behind. That works beautifully on memory cards, USB sticks and external drives, where deleted data usually sits untouched until something overwrites it.
Your Mac’s built-in drive is different. On modern Macs the internal SSD is encrypted, and the moment you delete something the system clears that space (a feature called TRIM). Within seconds the old data is gone for good — there’s nothing left to scan, and no app, ours included, can bring it back. The same is true of an iPhone’s storage. So instead of scanning, your best moves are the copies your devices keep for you.
Check Recently Deleted in Photos
Open the Photos app and look in the Recently Deleted album in the sidebar. Photos and videos stay there for 30 days after you delete them, so if it’s been less than a month, select what you want and click Recover. On an iPhone or iPad, the album is in Photos under Albums › Utilities › Recently Deleted.
Check the Trash
If the files lived in Finder rather than the Photos library, open the Trash in your Dock. Anything still there can be dragged back out or right-clicked and Put Back. Do this before the Trash is emptied — once it’s emptied, the data is subject to the same encryption and TRIM as everything else on the internal drive.
Restore from Time Machine
If you back up with Time Machine, connect your backup drive, open the folder where the photos used to be, and enter Time Machine from the menu bar. Browse back to a date before the loss and click Restore. This is the most reliable way to get back files that are truly gone from the drive.
Check iCloud
If you use iCloud Photos, a deletion on one device syncs to the others — but the Recently Deleted album syncs too, so check it on any signed-in device, and sign in at iCloud.com, where Photos has its own Recently Deleted. Also worth a look: any other backup you keep, like an external clone or a cloud service such as Google Photos or Dropbox.
Still nothing?
If none of those turn up your photos and they were only ever on the Mac’s internal drive, they’re most likely unrecoverable — and we’d rather tell you that than sell you a tool that can’t help.
But if those photos were on a camera card, phone card, USB stick or external drive at any point, that’s exactly what Shotback is for.
Frequently asked questions
Can any app recover photos deleted from my Mac's internal drive?
Generally no. Modern Macs encrypt the internal drive and clear deleted space within seconds (a feature called TRIM), so there is nothing left for an app to scan. Your backups — Recently Deleted, Time Machine, iCloud — are the real way back.
How long do photos stay in Recently Deleted?
30 days. After that, the Photos app removes them permanently.
I emptied the Trash. Are my files gone?
From the Mac's internal drive, most likely yes. From an external drive or memory card, often not — that data usually stays until it's overwritten, and Shotback can scan for it.