I accidentally deleted the wrong folder on my Mac APFS drive and need help recovering the deleted files. I haven’t saved much since it happened, but I’m not sure whether Time Machine, snapshots, or APFS data recovery software is the safest next step.
Yeah, that sinking feeling after erasing the wrong APFS volume or deleting the wrong folder is awful. But don’t treat it like the files are automatically gone forever. A lot of the time, deleted or formatted data is still sitting there until macOS or another app writes over it.
The main thing is to stop touching that drive. Seriously, the less you do, the better your odds.
- Stop using the affected disk right away.
- Don’t save or copy anything new to it.
- Don’t reinstall macOS on that same drive.
- Don’t run First Aid, TestDisk, or repair tools before you’ve recovered the files you care about.
- If it’s an external drive, unplug it until you’re ready to work on recovery.
If you have Time Machine, check that first. It’s the easiest path by far. Even if the backup drive isn’t plugged in, still open Time Machine because APFS may have local snapshots, and those can sometimes bring back recently deleted files.
If there’s no backup, then you’re looking at recovery software.
I’d probably try Disk Drill first, mainly because it understands APFS rather than only doing a raw signature scan. When that works, you have a better chance of getting back folder names, filenames, and metadata instead of ending up with a giant pile of randomly named files. It can also help with deleted files, formatted APFS volumes, and damaged APFS containers.
The safer way to do it is:
- Download Disk Drill, but install it on another drive if you can.
- Connect the affected APFS disk, or select the internal drive if that’s what was erased.
- Give it Full Disk Access in macOS Settings so it can scan APFS properly.
- Choose the drive and run Search for Lost Data.
- Let the scan complete instead of stopping it early.
- Use preview to make sure the photos, videos, documents, or whatever else are actually recoverable.
- Recover only what you need, and save it to a different drive. Never restore it back onto the same APFS disk.
One useful thing in Disk Drill is the option to make a disk image first. If the drive is acting flaky, scanning the image is safer than hammering the original disk over and over. The S.M.A.R.T. health info is worth checking too, since it can tell you whether this looks like simple file system damage or a drive that’s starting to fail.
If Disk Drill doesn’t turn up what you need, there are other tools, but they have tradeoffs.
PhotoRec is free and can be very effective, especially for photos, videos, and documents. The catch is that it usually works by file signatures, not the APFS directory structure, so filenames and folders are often gone.
TestDisk can help if the real problem is a broken APFS partition setup rather than just deleted files. I still wouldn’t make it the first move. Recover the important stuff first, because changing partition information before you have your files can make a bad situation messier.
Also, internal Mac SSDs are a special case because of TRIM. Once TRIM clears the deleted blocks, recovery software can’t bring them back. That’s why speed matters. And if a FileVault-encrypted APFS volume was formatted, the encryption keys are usually gone too, which often means recovery isn’t realistic.
I’d skip the DIY route if the drive:
- keeps appearing and disappearing,
- clicks, grinds, or beeps,
- disconnects while scanning,
- freezes the Mac whenever you access it,
- or shows serious S.M.A.R.T. warnings.
Those signs point more toward hardware failure. In that case, repeatedly powering it on and scanning it can make things worse. A recovery lab is the better call.
Good labs often do a free evaluation, and many are no data, no fee. Logical recovery usually starts around $300–500, while physical drive damage can easily be $1,000+, depending on the problem.
If this was just an accidental delete or format, though, you may still have a decent shot. Just don’t write anything else to the drive, recover to a separate disk, and start sooner rather than later.
Check whether the folder was in iCloud Drive, Desktop, or Documents before you spend time scanning the APFS disk. If iCloud sync was on, the deletion may have propagated there, and your best shot might be iCloud.com’s Recently Deleted section or another Mac/iPhone that has not synced yet. Put that device offline before opening Files/Finder, otherwise it may “catch up” and delete the same folder. If it was a normal local folder, then yes, stop writing to the drive and scan from somewhere else, but don’t overlook the cloud copy. A lot of Mac users think “APFS recovery” when the actual missing folder was being managed by iCloud the whole time.
Check snapshots before you install recovery apps.
I agree with the “stop writing to the disk” advice, but I would not jump straight into a full APFS scan if this was a recent folder delete on the system drive. A scan is slow, and on an internal SSD it may already be too late for deleted blocks because of TRIM. A Time Machine/APFS snapshot, if one exists, is much cleaner because you are copying normal files back from a point in time instead of trying to carve deleted data out of free space.
Open Terminal and run:
tmutil listlocalsnapshots /
If you see entries with dates from before the deletion, that is the first place I’d look. Then open Time Machine from the menu bar or System Settings, go to the original folder location, and step back to a time before the mistake. Restore to a different location if you want to be cautious, such as an external drive or a temporary folder, so you can compare before replacing anything.
Small catch: local snapshots are not guaranteed. macOS can purge them when space is needed, and if Time Machine was never set up, you may not have any. People sometimes talk about APFS snapshots like they are an undelete feature, but they are only useful if the snapshot actually existed before the delete and has not been cleaned up since.
I’d also avoid “tidying up” while you are figuring this out. Don’t empty Trash if you haven’t already. Don’t run CleanMyMac-style cleanup tools. Don’t let Photos, Dropbox, iCloud Drive, Steam, Xcode, or anything else churn through huge caches on that disk. Even normal browsing can write a lot of small files.
If snapshots are empty and iCloud/Trash are dead ends, then recovery software is the next reasonable step. Disk Drill is fine to try, especially if you want a friendlier interface, but keep expectations in check on a modern internal Mac SSD. It may find older copies, previews, thumbnails, or files from non-trimmed areas, while the exact folder tree you deleted may not come back. On an external APFS hard drive or non-TRIM SSD, the odds are usually better.
Do the scan from another Mac or boot volume if possible. Save recovered files somewhere else. If the missing folder matters a lot, make an image of the affected disk first and scan the image, not the original. That part is boring, but it prevents you from turning one bad delete into three different recovery attempts fighting over the same drive.
The quick order I’d use is: Trash, iCloud recently deleted if relevant, Time Machine/local snapshots, then recovery scan. If the deleted folder was on the internal SSD and there are no snapshots, move fast but don’t expect miracles. APFS is not the main villain there. SSD cleanup is.
