10 Best Data Recovery Software for Mac in 2025

What Are the Chances of Recovering Lost Data on Mac

The best data recovery software for Mac can save the day when the situation seems utterly desperate, but it can’t address every single data loss situation that you may experience.

When data recovery software can help:

• User error — Even experienced users make mistakes, and their mistakes sometimes lead to data loss. If addressed soon enough, data loss caused by a user error can often be solved with just a couple of clicks.
• Formatting — It’s likely that formatting is the most destructive operation commonly performed by regular users. Its results are, fortunately, far less permanent than they seem because formatted storage devices are seldom overwritten during the formatting process.
• Data corruption — Software bugs, malware, and sudden loss of power are just three of many causes of data corruption. Unless the corruption is extensive, affected files can often be recovered using capable data recovery software.
• Changed file attributes — Some strains of malware are designed to mess with file attributes to make files seem as if they were deleted, and the same thing can happen because of a user error. The best data recovery software applications are not confused by changed file attributes and can see hidden files without any problems.
• File system failure — Modern file systems are resilient but not perfect. A partial storage device failure, such as when a bunch of sectors on a hard drive become unreadable, can lead to file system failure, which may cause your Mac to not boot properly. Fortunately, a professional data recovery app can address even this seemingly hopeless scenario.

When it’s impossible to recover data using software:

• Physical damage — When your hard drive looks like it was the star of a Hydraulic Press Channel video, you can forget about using data recovery software to get your data back. In fact, even a single faulty electronic component or a broken connector makes it impossible to recover data using software until the damage has been repaired—something only professionals should attempt to do.
• SSDs with TRIM enabled — Modern Macs with SSDs take advantage of the TRIM command to increase performance when performing write operations by not preserving any content that’s not considered to be necessary by the operating system, such as deleted files. In other words, a file deleted from a TRIM-enabled SSD physically disappears from the drive, making its recovery impossible. The copy-on-write feature of the APFS file system makes the situation a little bit less hopeless, but you should still keep your expectations low when recovering a TRIM-enabled SSD.
• Storage device not recognized — Data recovery software can’t recover any storage device that your Mac is unable to communicate with. As a rule of thumb, if you can see your storage device in Disk Utility, then it can be recovered using data recovery software. If not, then you’re out of luck.
• Lost decryption key — The purpose of encryption is to make stored data unreadable without entering the correct decryption key first. If you no longer remember your decryption key and have no way of recovering it, then your data recovery software won’t find lost files because it will only see encrypted data.

NOTE: Generally, lost data can be recovered for as long as they are physically present on the storage device (=not overwritten) and the storage device itself is in good working order. To increase your data recovery chances, minimize the use of the affected storage device and use the best recovery software available. For more information, read our detailed guide on how to recover deleted files on Mac.

Disk Drill Data Recovery for Mac is easily our favorite file recovery software for Mac because it blends usability with impressive data recovery capabilities, something both regular home users and IT professionals can appreciate.

The latest version of Disk Drill for Mac is fully compatible with M1/M2/M3/M4 Macs, and it can recognize over 400 file types, including documents, images, audio files, videos, and archives. Many recoverable files can be previewed directly inside the app, so selecting the right files for recovery is easy.

Bundled with Disk Drill for Mac is an entire collection of useful tools whose shared purpose is to help users better manage their data and prevent its loss. For example, there’s a disk health monitoring, byte-to-byte backup utility, duplicate finder, and even a disk space analyzer.

Besides Mac hard drives and various external storage devices, Disk Drill for Mac can recover iOS and Android smartphones and tablets, making it exceptionally versatile. The latest version even includes the so-called Advanced Camera Recovery module, which can recover fragmented video files recorded by GoPro cameras, drones, and other devices using sophisticated algorithms.

The only criticism we can have is the fact that Disk Drill’s developer, CleverFiles, doesn’t provide a customer support number, so you’re limited to email-based communication. At least there’s an excellent online knowledge base, which covers most data recovery situations one might encounter.

Wondershare Recoverit for Mac is a well-marketed data recovery solution that has gained significant traction among Mac users thanks to its polished interface and aggressive advertising campaigns. The software supports all modern macOS versions including Tahoe and is fully optimized for Apple Silicon Macs.

Just like Disk Drill, Wondershare Recoverit can fix corrupted video files from cameras and drones, and it boasts an impressive 96% recovery rate with support for over 1000+ file types from virtually any storage scenario, including formatted drives, emptied trash, and lost partitions.

The latest version includes enhanced photo and video recovery algorithms, a bootable media creator for system crash recovery, and the ability to recover data from BitLocker-encrypted drives. However, the free version is quite limited, allowing recovery of only 100 MB of data, which is less generous than many competitors.

Just like many other data recovery software applications for Mac, Tenorshare 4DDiG for Mac can recover data in just three clicks: select location, scan, and recover. It supports the latest macOS Tahoe and is fully compatible with M1/M2/M3/M4 Macs.

One feature that makes the application worth pickign is the AI-powered photo enhancer, which can repair corrupted or damaged photos during the recovery process. This feature is useful for recovering old or partially damaged image files without any additional third-party tools, which often come with their own subscriptions. The application claims to support over 2000 file types, but that’s probably largely a marketing trick based on some unusual way of counting file signatures.

Last but not least, 4DDiG includes a feature for recovering data directly from crashed systems without creating a bootable drive first, using what they call "Direct System Recovery". The preview feature is comprehensive, allowing users to view recoverable files before purchase, though actual recovery requires a paid license.

R-Studio for Mac is powerful data recovery software that can recover files from APFS, HFS+, HFS, FAT, NTFS, ReFS, UFS1/UFS2, and Ext2/Ext3/Ext4 partitions. The latest version supports Mac with Apple’s M chips, but it also runs on older Macs with Intel, PowerPC G5, or PowerPC G4 processors.

Aimed at more advanced users and data recovery professionals, R-Studio for Mac has a number of features that regular home users are unlikely to appreciate. A good example is the built-in hex editor, which can be used to view the binary data that constitutes computer files. R-Studio for Mac can also recover files over a network or from damaged RAID arrays, create disk images, and display the S.M.A.R.T. status of a storage device.

All these capabilities don’t come cheap, though. The version that supports network recovery costs $179.99, which is twice as much as most competing software. Fortunately, there’s a more affordable version that has fewer features, so you can choose the one that best meets your needs.

From a distance, it may seem that TestDisk for Mac is the same data recovery software as PhotoRec for Mac. That’s somewhat true because both applications can be used to recover lost data, but TestDisk can do even more. It can recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again.

Just like PhotoRec, TestDisk is intended to run in the Terminal app, so make sure to carefully read the official guide before you start messing with it. The good news is that the guide does a great job of explaining how the software works in a step-by-step fashion, and there are also plenty of instructional videos online.

The easiest way to install TestDisk on modern Macs is with Homebrew, a package manager for macOS. Homebrew itself can be installed with a single command, and it then takes just one extra command to install TestDisk.