How to Recover Deleted Applications on Mac with Free and Proved Ways

If you do not want to go through the process of reinstalling an application or program on your Mac, there are three options you can learn how to recover deleted applications on your MacBook Pro, MacBook Air or iMac.

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Workable Solutions Step-by-step Troubleshooting
1. Recover in Trash Bin Access the Trash Bin By clicking on the...Full steps

2. Using Data Recovery Software

Select the disk location (it can be...Full steps

Applications can sudddenly disappear from your Mac after a major macOS update, or a clean install. Once there was a macOS update bug that caused Mac desktop files and icons lost, including some installed programs either. Besides, Mac users can lose their apps in many other situations, and they want to know badly about how to recover deleted applications on Mac without reinstallation.

  • Virus or malware damage
  • Wrongly removed apps while cleaning Mac storage
  • Mistakenly drag the application or a dmg file to Trash
  • Permanently deleted an application using hot keys on Mac

Despite that you can hopefully restore an application by redownloading from the website or getting it on App Store, users want to find the fastest recovery way that won't require an internet or a long waiting time. Most of all, for some users, they're used to coping with an old-version program that is no longer available to download again. They must find the original copy of the program version using some usual way, which we'll be introducing soon.

Solution 1. Recover Deleted Application in Trash Bin - 100% Free

recover deleted application from trash bin

First and foremost, you can always find the recently deleted items, including an installed program on Mac within the Trash Bin folder. The truth is that when you delete an application from the Mac desktop or from the Launchpad, its installation files and the shortcut are both removed. This is a little different from the Windows platform which you deleted a program icon, the setup file usually still exists on the downloaded folder. 

So if it's not the permanent deletion, try to find the app in the Trash and get it back.

Read also: How to recover permanently deleted files on Mac

Step 1. Access the Trash Bin By clicking on the trash icon located at the right corner of the Dock on your Mac.

Step 2. You need to browse to find the deleted program or app you just deleted. You can directly search the program name in the search bar.

Step 3. After you located the program, right-click on it and click on Put Backup. You may need to enter your Admin username and password to confirm the operation. 

Step 4. Find the application you just restored in its original location.

Solution 2. Recover Deleted Application Using Mac Data Recovery Software -100% Working

Though there is a beacon of hope you can follow in Trash, the recovery chance is so limited. Most of the time, you can hardly find the missing programs in Trash due to the deletion of virus attack, third-party app uninstallation software, or a problematic macOS update. Unless you had made a previous backup in iCloud, iTunes or Time Machine hard drive, you can only rely on some data recovery program, which is developed with specialized data scan and reconstruction technology.

Regarding the expertise, brand reputation and easeu of use, we choose EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac in case you're experiencing serious data loss issues like a program suddenly disappeared. What's more, for whomever lost files, photos, videos, documents and formatted a disk on a Mac computer and an external storage device, you can benefit a lot from the EaseUS Mac recovery software's strong capability of HDD/USB/SD card recovery.

It takes only three steps to restore an application on Mac with the software.

Step 1. Select the location to scan

Launch EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Mac and choose the hard drive, SSD,  SD card, USB flash drive, or TF card where you lost data. Click "Search for lost files" to start scanning.

Note: Before data recovery, you'd better click "Disk Backup" from the left sidebar to create a backup of your Mac to avoid further data loss. After backing up, the software can recover data from the Mac backup, and your computer can wirte new data again.

select a location and click search for lost files

Step 2. Filter lost Mac data

The software will automatically scan for lost data on MacBook/iMac. When the scan completes, filter wanted data through the "Type" and "Path" buttons.

filter lost files in types

Step 3. Recover lost data or files

Double-click a file to preview it. Then, click the "Recover" button to restore the lost data to another place. 

click recover to recover lost data

What Else Can Help Restore an Application Removed from Mac?

As the article summarised, there are two general ways to restore a deleted app on Mac. One is a free method and the other is a proved useful method. You should try both of them to maximumly increase the chance of successful recovery or the lost app.

Nevertheless, do not forget the backup, if you had prepared before the deletion. The attainable backup options on Mac to back up or sync a program data are iCloud, iTunes and Time Machine backup drive. 

If none of the methods helped you finally, the last resort is to download again from the official website or the App Store. For pre-installed apps that you removed, you may get it from the installation medium. See how to install macOS from USB.

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Updated by Cedric

Cedric Grantham is a senior editor and data recovery specialist of EaseUS. He mainly writes articles and how-to tips about data recovery on PC and Mac. He has handled 10,000+ data recovery cases and is good at data recovery of NTFS, FAT (FAT32 and ExFAT) file systems, and RAID structure reorganization.

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Written by Jean

Jean is recognized as one of the most professional writers in EaseUS. She has kept improving her writing skills over the past 10 years and helped millions of her readers solve their tech problems on PC, Mac, and iOS devices.

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