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Are you looking for the best and free Mac data recovery software? If yes, you come to the right place. MiniTool Software collects some professional and reliable Mac data recovery software and shows them in this article. You can select a suitable one according to your actual situation.

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If you are a Mac computer user, a free Mac data recovery software is a necessary configuration. When your Mac files are lost or deleted for some reason, you can use such a tool to get them back.

When you search for Mac file recovery software free on the internet, you will see many choices. To guarantee the safety of the current data on your computer, you’d better select a professional and reliable Mac file recovery tool. And it is also the topic we will talk about in this article: best and free Mac data recovery software.

We will list you some Mac data recovery programs that are worth trying. You can select one according to your requirements.

Tip: No matter which data recovery software you are using, it can only recover the lost and deleted files that are not overwritten by new data. Thus, when you find your files get lost or deleted, you’d better stop using the device as soon as possible to prevent the missing files from being overwritten.

This post will show you how long it will take before a deleted file is unrecoverable, how to make files unrecoverable, and how to undelete a file on Windows.

Top 5 Best and Free Mac Data Recovery Software

  1. Stellar Data Recovery for Mac
  2. Disk Drill for Mac
  3. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac
  4. Wondershare Recoverit for Mac
  5. Ontrack EasyRecovery for Mac

1. Stellar Data Recovery for Mac

Stella Mac Data Recovery for Mac is a highly recommended choice. It is specially designed to retrieve different kinds of files from your Mac machine. The supported files include documents, photos, audios, videos, music files, and more.

It works under multiple situations like file deletion, virus invasion, disk failure, partition loss, system crash, etc. Besides, it can recover data from APFS, HFS, HFS+, ex-FAT, and NTFS drives. So, it can fully meet your demands for Mac data recovery.

Are you bothered by the disk you inserted was not readable by this computer when using an external hard drive on a Mac computer. Now, get some solutions here.

This software has a trial edition. You can use it to scan the drive you want to recover data from and then check whether you can find your needed files from the scan results. Now, you can go to the MiniTool download center to get this Mac file recovery tool.

After downloading and installing this software on your Mac device, you can use it to restore your lost and deleted files. Here is a guide:

1. Open Stellar Data Recovery for Mac.

2. On this Select What To Recover interface, you can choose Recover Everything. You can also customize the scanning ranges based on your own requirements.

3. Click Next to continue.

4. On this Select Location interface, you need to select the drive you need to scan. If you want to perform a deep scan, you need to turn on the Deep Scan button that is on the bottom-left side of the interface.

5. Click Next to start the scanning process.

6. When the scanning process ends, there will be a small pop-up window saying Scanning Completed Successfully! You need to click OK to close this window and see the scan results.

7. By default, this software will show you the Classic List that contains both existing and deleted files on the Mac PC. If you only want to recover your deleted data, you can switch to Deleted List to make this software only show you the deleted items. Then, you can open each folder to find the deleted files you want to recover.

This software allows you to preview some types of files like images, videos, and more. If you are not sure whether it is the file you want to restore, you can double-click on that file to preview it.

Since it is the trial edition of this software, you are not allowed to use it to recover your needed files. But you can update this freeware to a full edition and then recover files to a suitable location. Here you need to know that you’d better not save the data to its original location. Otherwise, the deleted files can be overwritten and become unrecoverable.

When every step is done, you can access the specified storage location to directly see and use the recovered files.

Comprehensive Evaluation

Stellar Data Recovery for Mac: ★★★★☆

Pros:

  • It can recover all types of files.
  • It supports multiple types of storage devices.
  • It can recover data from an unbootable Mac computer.
  • It supports previewing files.

Cons:

You need to update to a full edition if you want to use it to recover data from the scan results.

Stellar Data Recovery is one of the best data recovery tools we’ve used, with highly customizable searches, a huge file-type library, and deep scan abilities. techradar.com

2. Disk Drill for Mac

Free Mac Apps Downloads

Disk Drill is a very famous Mac data recovery software. It supports the latest macOS 10.15 Catalina. It can recover all your lost and deleted files on your Mac computer. No matter you want to recover data from a hard drive, SSD, memory card, SD card, or pen drive on your Mac computer, this software can always work.

It is very easy to use this software to retrieve deleted files from your Mac computer. You just need to download this tool to your device, drag it to the Applications folder, launch it, and then select the drive you want to recover data from to scan. When the scanning process ends, you can preview the scanned files and then select your needed files to recover.

On the other hand, this software also has some other useful features like disk cleanup, duplicate finder, data backup, and more. These are also some necessary features for your Mac computer.

Do you want to delete duplicate files from your Windows computer? This article shows you how to find and delete duplicate files using duplicate file finders.

Comprehensive Evaluation

Disk Drill for Mac: ★★★★☆

Pros:

Top Mac Software Free
  • It supports many storage devices like internal Macintosh hard drives, external hard drives, cameras, iPhones, iPads, iPods, Android devices, USB flash drives, Kindles, and memory cards.
  • It can recover data from an unbootable Mac computer.
  • It supports previewing files.
  • It has more functional features like disk cleanup, duplicate finder, data backup, and more.

Cons:

If you want to recover all your files without limits, you need to use a Pro or Enterprise edition.

If you have Mac with a traditional hard drive, Disk Drill Pro offers one of the most advanced data recovery utilities available. pcmag.com

3. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac

EaseUS is a professional computer supplier and its products include partition manager, data recovery software, data backup tool, etc. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac is one representative and it is specially designed to recover your Mac data under different situations.

Like other Mac file recovery tools, this software can recover your lost images, videos, documents, music files, and more from various types of data storage devices like internal hard drives, external hard drives, SD cards, and more.

After getting this software, you can open it, select the target drive to scan, and then choose your desired files from the scan results to recover. With the free edition of this EaseUS Mac data recovery free edition, you can recover 2GB data without paying any cent.

Comprehensive Evaluation

EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac: ★★★★

Pros:

  • You can use the free edition to recover 2GB files.
  • It can recover 1000+ types of files, including documents, images, videos, archives, and more.
  • It supports many storage devices like external HDD/SSD, fusion drive, USB drive, SD card, CF card, Digital Camera, Video Player, and more.
  • It can recover data from an unbootable Mac computer.
  • It supports previewing files.

Cons:

You need to update to the Pro edition if you want to recover your data without limitations.

Overall, EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Pro is one of the most powerful file recovery programs we’ve used. It’s backed by highly advanced features, a great user interface, and a fast deep scan tool, among other things. techradar.com

4. Wondershare Recoverit for Mac

Recoverit for Mac is a software from Wondershare. It is also specially designed to get your lost data back under different situations like system crash, virus attack, file deletion, formatting, and more. It supports the latest macOS and APFS, ExFAT, FAT16, FAT32, HFS+, NTFS, Ext2, Ext 3, and Ext4 file systems.

After entering this software, you can select the target drive to scan and then find the files you want to recover from the scan results.

Comprehensive Evaluation

Wondershare Recoverit for Mac: ★★★★

Pros:

  • It can recover 1000+ types of files.
  • It supports many storage devices like hard drive, external hard drive, USB flash drive, SSD, digital camera, Drone camera, SD card, CF card, etc.
  • It can recover data from an unbootable Mac computer.
  • It supports previewing files that are less than 15 MB.

Cons:

Not all files are recoverable.

Wondershare Data Recovery is the best data recovery tool I have ever used in my life, it allows to recover huge range of file formats on nutshell, though, data recovery solutions are generally used to recover accidentally or system-deleted files, corrupted, deleted or formatted partitions, or data on crashed hard drives. g2.com

Are you looking for solutions to recover videos from DJI drones or recover photos from DJI camcorder? You can read this article to get solutions.

5. Ontrack EasyRecovery for Mac

Ontrack EasyRecovery for Mac is another professional Mac data recovery software and you can use its free edition to recover up to 1GB data. This software can work in different situations like file deletion, partition deletion, formatting, and more.

Comprehensive Evaluation

Ontrack EasyRecovery for Mac: ★★★☆

Pros:

  • It can recover data from various types of devices like internal and external hard drives, SSDs, RAIDS, USB, optical media, and memory cards.
  • It supports APFS, HFS, HFS+, NTFS, FAT, ExFAT volumes.
  • It can repair damaged and corrupt photo and video files

Cons:

  • It can’t recover data from a computer that is unbootable.
  • Its paid edition is more expensive than some competitors.
  • It has no built-in file previewer.
Ontrack EasyRecovery is the most powerful, thorough data recovery software we've tested, and it's blazing fast, too. Its only real drawback is a sometimes-daunting interface. pcmag.com

How to Select the Best Mac Data Recovery Software?

Basic Requirements

First, you should know the common features an excellent and professional Mac data recovery software should own:

  • Has an easy-to-use interface.
  • Recovers various types of data, including photos, videos, audios, music files, documents, and more.
  • Recovers files from different types of storage devices like hard disk drives, solid-state drives, SD cards, memory cards, and more.
  • Supports the latest Mac version.
  • Recovers data from unbootable computers.
  • Supplies 24*7 technical support.

Expect Ontrack EasyRecovery for Mac, which can recover data from an unbootable computer, all the rest four programs are designed with this function.

Prices

Those are the prices for all editions of each Mac data recovery software. You can select one according to your actual situation. You can also go to the official site of each Mac data recovery software to get more price information.

Stellar Data Recovery for Mac

EditionProfessionalPremiumTechnician
Price$79.99$99.99$149

Disk Drill for Mac

EditionProfessionalEnterprise
Price$89$499

EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac

Edition1-Month1-YearLifetime Upgrades
Price$89.95$119.95$169.95

Wondershare Recoverit for Mac

EditionEssentialStandardAdvancedFor Team
Price$79.95$99.95$119.95$399.95

Ontrack EasyRecovery for Mac

EditionHomeProfessionalPremiumTechnician
Price$110.14$177.46$99.00$558.44

Performance

The most important element of a Mac data recovery software is its performance.

Scanning Time

Normally, the first two software has a better performance and the whole scanning process can end within 30 minutes. If the disk you want to scan is too large, the whole process will last longer. But it will still end within 2 or 3 hours.

Recovering Data from Unbootable Mac Device

If your macOS is damaged or corrupt due to some reasons and you want to recover data from your device, Ontrack EasyRecovery for Mac is not available because it doesn’t support creating a bootable device for Mac data recovery.

Extra Features

Besides, some of these free Mac data recovery tools have their extra features like data backup and duplicate files finder in Disk Drill for Mac. You can dig more features when using them.

Bottom Line

In this post, we show you 5 reliable and safe professional free Mac data recovery software. You can just select one based on your actual requirements. Should you have any related issues, you can let us know in the comment or contact us via [email protected].

Mac Data Recovery Software FAQ

As long as the deleted files are not overwritten by new data, you can use a free Mac data recovery software, such as Stellar Data Recovery for Mac, to get them back.
  1. Go to Trash.
  2. Find the file or folder you want to restore. Then, right-click it.
  3. Select Put Back from the pop-out menu.

After these three steps, the selected file or folder will be restored to its original location.

As long as you select a professional and reliable data recovery software and download it using the official source, the data recovery software will be safe.
With the trial edition of Stellar Data Recovery for Mac, you can scan the drive you want to recover data from and preview files from the scan results. However, if you want to recover data with it, you need to pay for it.

When converting scanned invoices, reports or images into editable formats, OCR is required. If you are looking for the best free OCR solutions for mac like many others, we collect a list for you: a list of 12 powerful mac free ocr software or online, free OCR services to perform satisfactory OCR on digitized files for 2021.

Full List of Mac Free OCR

PlatformInputOutput
1. PDF OCR X CommunityOfflinePDF and ImagePDF, Text
OfflinePDF and ImageText, Image
3. OneNote OCROfflinePDF and ImageText
4. OCR App by LEAD ToolsOfflinePDF and ImageText
5. Easy Screen OCR for MacOfflineScreenshotText
6. DigitEyeOCROfflineBMP and GIFText
7. Google DocsOnlinePDF and ImagePDF, Word, ODT, RTF, Text, HTML, ePub
OnlinePDF and ImageWord, Excel, Text
OnlinePDF and ImageWord, Excel, PPT, Text, ePub, HTML, etc.
OnlinePDF and ImageWord, Excel, Text, ePub, PPT, DjVu, etc.
OnlinePDF, Image and DjVuPDF, Word, Text
OnlinePDF and ImagePDF, Word, Text, RTF

Free Try on The Best Mac OCR Program

  • Perform OCR on scanned documents and images
  • OCR files and export as 10 editable formats
  • Advanced OCR settings to improve OCR accuracy
  • Batch OCR
  • Recognize 27~200 languages
  • High quality OCR results
Free Download

6 Best Free OCR Software for Mac in 2021

There are 2 types of free OCR solutions for Mac users, either online or offline. In this part, we list 6 top free OCR software for MacOS basing on text recognition accuracy and overall features.

1. PDF OCR X Community

PDF OCR X Community is a simple drag-and-drop utility that converts single-page PDFs and images into text documents or searchable PDF files, it supports for more than 60 languages. For multi-page PDFs and batch conversion features, you need to pay its enterprise version.

Download Address: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pdf-ocr-x-community-edition/id571442933?mt=12

Advantages:

  1. Extremely easy to use;
  2. Support both PDF and image;
  3. Recognize 60 languages;

Disadvantages:

  1. Free edition only OCR single-page PDF;
  2. Formatting is messed up when working on complicate files;
  3. Relatively slow OCR process;

2. Evernote

Evernote is a popular note-syncing service, enables users to collect, nuture and share ideas across desktop and mobile platforms. One of its easily overlooked features is automatic OCR service. Users will be allowed to add images into Evernote server for automatic OCR, you may have to wait, but 10 minutes will be quite enough to finish the OCR.

Download Address: https://evernote.com/download

Advantages:

  1. Available for all platforms (MacOS, Windows, iOS, Android);
  2. Support both PDF and image;
  3. Recognize 28 languages;

Disadvantages:

  1. Limited OCR feature when dealing with PDF (file size, pages, resolution, etc.);
  2. Relatively slow OCR processing;

Evernote OCR review, how-to guide and troubleshooting

Evernote is one of the best and most popular cross-platform note-taking apps. In this article, you will find how to use Evernote OCR and what to do if Evernote OCR is not working.

READ MORE >

3. OneNote OCR

Microsoft OneNote is a program to take and manage notes anytime and anywhere. It greatly facilitates the collaborations between team members. Not only limited to manually input texts to create notes, Microsoft OneNote also embeds the OCR feature, OneNote OCR allowing users to recognize texts from images, so the image texts can be copied and paste as editable or searchable note.

Download Address: https://www.onenote.com/download

Advantages:

  1. Available for all platforms;
  2. Support both PDF and image;

Disadvantages:

  1. Can only copy text from PDF or image, no formatting is retained;
  2. OCR fails or crashes sometimes;

How to Do OneNote OCR on Image or PDF(Mac, Windows, iPad)

An impressive feature of OneNote is its built-in capability to do OneNote OCR. Here we are going to introduce OneNote OCR, demonstrate how to OCR image or PDF with OneNote.

READ MORE >

4. OCR App by LEADTOOLS

OCR App by LEADTOOLS is a MacOS application designed to recognize and extract texts from images. Also it offers a set of tools to improve the OCR accuracy, such as tweak OCR Engine Settings, flip, reverse, adjust binarization or brightness of the image. It can also perform OCR on scanned PDFs, but only export files as text. If you want o convert uploaded files to other format with LEADTOOLS, you will need to copy and paste to the text processor accordingly.

Download Address: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/leadtools-ocr/id604393629?mt=12

Advantages:

  1. Easy to use;
  2. Advanced settings to improve OCR accuracy;
  3. Support both image and PDF;
  4. Fast OCR;

Disadvantages:

  1. Recognize only 5 languages;
  2. No formatting is retained, only text;

5. Easy Screen OCR for Mac

Free Apps For Imac Computer

It is a light and simple Mac free OCR software to recognize texts from images. All you need to do is, capturing the screenshots of your file first, then performing OCR on the file to make the image text copyable. Also, it allows users to save the screenshot as PNG or PDF format. However, this free OCR software for mac only allows users to OCR 20 images for free.

Download Address: https://easyscreenocr.com/

Advantages:

  1. Easy to use;
  2. Small in size;
  3. Support to take screenshots from any files;

Disadvantages:

  1. Only 20 images can be processed with OCR;
  2. No formatting is retained;
  3. Unstable OCR accuracy;

6. DigitEyeOCR

Though DigitEyeOCR has discontinued to update for many years, for users who are using MacOS 10.10 and earlier, it is still worth a try. It is a free OCR software for mac to recognize texts from BMP and GIF images. If you want to do OCR on other image formats, you will need to convert the file to DigitEye OCR supported formats.

Download Address: https://digiteyeocr.en.softonic.com/mac

Disadvantages:

  1. Only support BMP and GIF;
  2. Unstable OCR accuracy;
  3. Relatively slow OCR process;
  4. No update for years;

6 Best online, free Services for Mac

Also, there are quite a lot of online, free OCR services for mac users, but not all of them can actually perform OCR or bring satisfactory OCR results. And here we pick 6 best free OCR tools online according to our OCR testing.

7. Google Docs

Google Docs is a service offered by Google to manage web-based documents, like creating, editing Word, Spreadsheets, presentations, even store them online for easy access on different devices. Users can perform Google OCR on images, scanned PDFs, it is fast with basically satisfactory results.

Top Mac software, free download

Advantages:

  1. Support images and PDF;
  2. Excellent support on output format (searchable PDF, Word, ODT, RTF, TXT, HTML, ePub);
  3. Edit files after OCR processing within Google Docs;

Disadvantages:

  1. Require several steps to finish the OCR;
  2. Unstable OCR accuracy;
  3. Take time to process OCR;

8. Online OCR

Online OCR is an online OCR service that can recognize the texts and characters from scanned files and images. It requires no software installation, what you need to do is upload the file (not exceeding size of 5MB) as guided, choose the language and output format(Word, Excel or Text), then 'Convert' to start the OCR process. Once finish, a download link will be offered to download the converted file.

Advantages:

  1. Support both image and PDF;
  2. Easy to use;
  3. Export files as Word, Excel and Text;
  4. Recognize 46 languages;

Disadvantages:

  1. Unstable OCR accuracy;
  2. Need to manually adjust formatting in the output file;
  3. Max file size limit 15 MB;

9. Online2PDF

Online2PDF is another online platform to manage PDF files, such as editing, compressing ,unlocking ,converting, merging, protecting and so on. Comparing with other online, free OCR tools, Online2pdf offers extended features to customize the output and support more output formats.

Advantages:

  1. Batch OCR;
  2. Support both image and PDF;
  3. Excellent support for output format;
  4. Allow customizing output files;

Disadvantages:

  1. File quantity and size limit;
  2. Recognize only 6 languages;
  3. Unstable OCR accuracy;

10. ConvertioOCR

Convertio is an online, free tool to OCR image and scanned documents, then save them as various editable formats. You can upload files from local or via url, even icloud storage accounts. It allows users to perform OCR on a multiple-language file.

Advantages:

  1. Upload files from local, URl or icloud storage services;
  2. Recognize multiple-language file;
  3. Excellent support for output formats (11 formats);
  4. Convert all or specific pages;
  5. Save converted files to Dropbox or Google Drive;

Disadvantages:

  1. Unstable OCR accuracy;
  2. Relatively slow OCR processs;
  3. Need to manually adjust the formatting;
  4. Only 10 pages can be done with OCR for free;

11. New OCR

New OCR can convert JPG, PNG, GIF, MBP, TIFF, PDF and DJVU files into Doc, TXT or PDF format. To improve the OCR accuracy, New OCR allows users to rotate images and analyze page layout before the OCR processing. If you want to export the files as other formats, you need to click the “Download” button at the bottom of its page to export.

Advantages:

  1. Support image, PDF and DjVu files;
  2. Export files as Word, Text and searchable PDF format;
  3. Allow to rotate or analyze page layout for more accurate OCR results;

Disadvantages:

  1. Unstable OCR accuracy;
  2. Fail to do OCR sometimes;

12. Free Online OCR

Free Online OCR is a free service enabling users to convert images, scanned PDFs into editable and searchable text, such as DOC, RTF,TXT or PDF. It will rotate the pages automatically for accurate OCR, you can get editable files with nice formatting.

Advantages:

  1. Support both image and PDF;
  2. Export files as Word, PDF, Text and RTF;

Disadvantages:

  1. Unstable OCR accuracy;
  2. Need to manually adjust formatting in the output file;

What if Mac Free OCR Tools Fall Short?

However, these online/free mac OCR tools are not suitable for all mac users, you may feel not satisfied in one way or another:

  1. There is a size limit of the files;
  2. It doesn’t support various input or output format;
  3. Risk of privacy leakages;
  4. The tool doesn’t support your expected language;
  5. The OCR result is not satisfied;
  6. It is feature limited;

......

As we all know, “free” means you cannot get everything you desire from the service, if you require higher than those free services can offer, you will need to pay. This is also true to OCR services.

Best Solution If Mac Free OCR Software/Service Not Working

Choices on paid professional OCR software for Mac users are large in quantity. But if you are looking for the one combining simplicity, versatility and affordability, Cisdem PDF Converter OCR is absolutely the best choice.

Cisdem PDF Converter OCR is a dedicated Mac OCR software to convert and create PDF, also perform OCR on scanned documents or images to make them editable & searchable. One thing makes Cisdem outperform its competitors is its high quality OCR performance:accurate OCR results and maintained original formatting.

Use Cisdem to OCR All Files Now

  • Convert PDF to 16 formats;
  • OCR scanned documents and images into Word, Excel, PPT, Keynote, Pages, etc;
  • Convert images;
  • Create PDF from virtually all documents;
  • Batch conversion;
  • High quality OCR and conversion results;
Free Download

Steps to Perform OCR on Files with Cisdem

  1. Add scanned PDF or image to Converter interface.
    Drag and drop, or click '+' to add files.
  2. Turn the OCR button ON, choose page range, file language and output format.
  3. Optional. Tweak the advanced OCR settings for more accurate results.
    Click the 'Settings' icon, a new interface will appear. You will find all the contents are marked as Texts, Images or Tables in different colorful boxes. If you want to output a part as table, remove the current mark box, click on 'Mark Tables' in the OCR applied zone, then drag a mark box to select the part you want to mark as Tables.
  4. Click “Convert” to start OCR.

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