Recuva for Mac: there isn’t one, so here is what to use

Why there is no Recuva for Mac

Recuva, from Piriform (the maker of CCleaner), is built for Windows and recovers deleted files mainly on NTFS and FAT drives. The vendor has never offered a macOS build, and wrappers that claim to run it on Mac are not a good idea for recovery work. You can see the Windows-only download on the Recuva page.

The internal-drive problem on a Mac

This matters more than the choice of software. Modern Macs have solid-state storage with TRIM, and Apple-silicon and T2 Macs encrypt the internal drive in hardware. When you empty the Trash, the space is marked free and the encryption keys for that data are effectively gone. In general, recovery tools cannot bring back files deleted from a modern Mac’s internal drive, whatever they advertise. Your realistic options there are Time Machine, iCloud Drive’s recently deleted folder, or another backup.

The situations where a Mac recovery tool does help are external: a USB stick, SD card, external hard drive or SSD that was formatted, stopped mounting, or had files deleted. That is where the tools below apply.

Free Recuva alternatives on a Mac

Vendors’ terms can change, so confirm on their sites: TestDisk and Disk Drill.

Recovering from a card or drive on a Mac with Retrova

1. Stop writing to the drive. Eject it if it is mounted and do not format or initialise it.
2. Open Retrova and pick the drive or card from the list. It shows the file system it detected.
3. If Retrova can read the file system (for example an NTFS or exFAT drive, see copying files off an NTFS drive on a Mac), browse the original folders and copy what you want. For deleted files on NTFS, FAT or exFAT, turn on Show deleted files. Otherwise run Deep scan and choose file types.
4. Save to a different drive and run Verify.

Retrova asks for your Mac password because reading a drive directly needs administrator rights. It only uses that to read. If you deleted a document yesterday from an external drive formatted as NTFS, FAT32 or exFAT, open the drive in Retrova and turn on Show deleted files: it lists deleted files with their original names and folders, each marked Good, Possibly overwritten or May be incomplete. That doesn’t work on APFS, ext or other file systems, where TestDisk (for ext) or a paid tool may do better.

What Retrova cannot do

Retrova is young, and there are things it cannot do. If one of these is your situation, use a different tool:

• Undelete with names outside NTFS, FAT and exFAT. Retrova lists deleted files with their names and folders on NTFS, FAT12/16/32 and exFAT only. On APFS, ext and other file systems it falls back to deep scan, so names and folders are lost and fragmented files may come back damaged. On NTFS, compressed or encrypted deleted files, and ones whose details span several records, are not listed.
• Encrypted drives without the key. Retrova opens BitLocker (password or 48-digit recovery key), LUKS 1/2 (passphrase) and FileVault or encrypted APFS volumes (password) only when you have the key. It cannot open BitLocker startup-key (.bek) or TPM-only drives, or the startup disk of a T2 or Apple silicon Mac away from that Mac. Decryption runs at about 100 MB/s.
• RAID and NAS volumes, APFS snapshots, bootable media and phones. Not supported.
• Code signing. Builds are not signed or notarised yet, hence the first-launch warning.
• Fragmented file carving. Deep scan finds contiguous files of 72 types, which is fewer than the 400 to 1,000 types some paid tools claim. Names are lost, and files stored in pieces may come back damaged or not at all.

The first-launch warning

Retrova’s builds are not signed or notarised with a paid Apple or Microsoft certificate yet, so the first time you open it you will see a warning. On a Mac, open System Settings > Privacy & Security, scroll down, click Open Anyway and confirm (on macOS 14 or earlier, right-click the app and choose Open). On Windows, when SmartScreen says “Windows protected your PC”, click More info, then Run anyway. You only do this once. The source code is public if you would rather build it yourself or read what it does.

How we checked

We checked Recuva’s product page for supported platforms and compared the Mac tools’ own documentation. Statements about internal Mac storage reflect how SSD TRIM and Apple’s hardware encryption generally work; we did not test deletion recovery on internal drives. Competitor details were checked in October 2026 and are dated in the text. Vendor prices and free limits change often and many run permanent sales, so treat every figure here as approximate and confirm on the vendor’s own page before you buy.

Questions

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• Copy files off an NTFS drive on a MacRead a Windows drive on macOS, even a damaged one, without paying for a driver.
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