Top Free Software For Mac

January 02, 2020
18 min to read

Top Free Photo Editing Software For Mac
Top Free Software For Macbook
Best Mac Software
Top Free Antivirus Software For Mac

Above I've listed top 10 free DVD burning software for Mac. To complete the essential DVD burning tasks without the DVD menu, I recommend you install Burn, LiquidCD, ExpressBurn, SimplyBurns, etc. IDVD is merely helpful for old version Mac. ITunes and Finder can't create video DVDs.

Most free photo editors available on the App Store are quite basic, offering just a limited number of filters and allowing you to easily and quickly liven up your photos before posting them on social media.

But if you’re an aspiring or professional photographer, you probably need a more powerful app with a broader set of tools to use your creativity to the fullest. Besides, you probably use your Mac for photo editing because working on a large screen makes it possible to adjust the slightest details.

1. Apple’s Photos (Built-in app)

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Apple’s Photos app is included for free on all recently released Macs. It does a good job at organizing your photos, but its collection of photo enhancement tools leaves much to be desired. Hopefully, our selection of the best free programs for photo editing on Mac will help you choose the right app to suit all your creative needs.

2. Luminar (7 days trial)

Luminar is another full-featured photo editor that’s popular with both Mac and Windows users. It can work as a standalone app as well as a plugin for such popular programs as Apple Photos.

Luminar uses Artificial Intelligence to enable sophisticated yet quick photo enhancements. Among these AI features are Sky Enhancer, which adds more depth and detail to the sky in your photos while leaving other areas untouched; Accent AI, which analyzes a photo and automatically applies the best combination of different effects to enhance your image; and Sun Rays, which allows you to place an artificial sun and adjust the lighting to your liking or make the sun rays already in your photo look even more incredible.

Luminar has over 60 filters you can apply to your photos to enhance them in a moment. Luminar also provides a set of powerful tools for cropping, transforming, cloning, erasing, and stamping, along with layers, brushes, and many more incredible features. Luminar supports the Touch Bar on the latest MacBook Pro, making photo editing even more effortless and pleasing.

3. Photolemur 3 (Free Version with watermark)

Photolemur is a relative newcomer on the photo editing market but it has all the chances to win the favor of beginner photographers and hobbyists. Running on Artificial Intelligence, Photolemur is a completely automatic photo enhancer, meaning that it does all the editing for you in no time. It has the simplest interface, with only a few buttons and sliders to adjust the enhancement to your liking and view the before and after results.

All you need to do is choose a photo (or a few) that you want to improve, drag and drop or import them using the Import button, and let the program make enhancements. After it’s done, you can compare the edited version with the original image by using the before–after slider and, if you want, adjust the skin tone or even enlarge the eyes using additional sliders. Pretty easy, huh?

Photolemur also offers a number of impressive styles to touch up your photos and give them a sophisticated and professional look. With this app, you don’t need to stuff your head with photo editing nuances and terms. Just run Photolemur and watch the magic happen!

4. Aurora HDR (14 days trial)

As you probably can tell from the name, Aurora HDR is designed to help photographers enhance their HDR photos, making them even more detailed and beautiful. It’s an ideal tool for editing your photos, with an extensive collection of more than 20 tools including details, tone, mapping, color, glow, and vignette. Each tool has its unique selection of controls to adjust its effects.

Aurora HDR enables you to work with brushes, layers, and masks, and provides a number of automatic AI tools for recognizing and removing noise, enhancing colors, lighting, and details, improving clarity, and adding contrast to dull areas while leaving other areas untouched.

Aurora HDR does a great job dealing with difficult lighting situations and creating full-of-life images while being easy to use.

5. Pixelmator (Trial 30 Days)

Pixelmator is a photo enhancer beloved by many Mac users, as it offers a good combination of a modern and simple interface, the ability to work on multiple layers, and powerful features that take photo editing to a whole new level. With so many editing tools, brushes, and effects, you can enhance your photos to your liking. You can choose between two versions of Pixelmator – standard and pro – depending on your needs. The standard version is great for basic photo editing with its selection of essential tools and filters, while the pro version is packed with extra brushes, tools, and effects that let you push your creativity to new boundaries. You can decide which version is suitable for you according to what features you’re looking for in a photo editing app.

6. Adobe Photoshop Elements 2020 (Trial link)

Photoshop Elements isn’t as affordable as other photo enhancers for beginner photographers. But luckily there’s a trial version available, so you can check it out before deciding whether this app is worthy of your money. Photoshop Elements acquired many powerful features from Photoshop, only Elements is simplified for amateur photographers and enthusiasts. It includes a good number of effects and filters, plus automated editing options for improving lighting, color balance, and exposure, and even opening closed eyes and reducing the effects of camera shake.

In addition to all of these awesome features, Photoshop also offers editing modes for beginners, intermediate users, and experts. Beginners will probably prefer Quick mode, as it focuses on essential tools to quickly enhance your photos by improving color, lighting, and other basic settings. Guided mode provides intermediate users with step-by-step guidance with more professional features like artistic effects, skin tone correction, and background replacement. Expert mode gives you full access to the app’s really powerful editing features and is ideal for creating stunning images.

7. Affinity Photo (Free Trial)

Affinity Photo’s interface may seem overwhelming at first, especially for novices, but when you come to grips with it you’ll find that the app is just what you’ve been looking for. Its numerous professional tools, effects, and filters encourage you to get creative with your photos. Among the coolest features Affinity Photo has to offer is a before and after view to compare the original photo with its edited version.

Affinity Photo works with 15 file types, including common ones like PDF, PSD, JPG, and GIF as well as some less popular ones. The app amazes with its abundance of basic and top-notch editing tools, allowing you to tweak your photos using all possible kinds of instruments. Affinity Photo allows you to edit HDR photos, apply artistic filters and effects, play with masks and layers, and create breathtaking compositions by combining several images in one. If you find its interface a bit much and are afraid of getting lost in all those advanced tools, you should probably look for something more suitable for your level. But Affinity Photo is worth mastering.

8. Google Photos

Google Photos is a popular cloud storage service for photos and videos. It can’t boast countless masterly tools like other photo enhancers that we review in this article, but it includes some fundamental features like filters, color adjustment sliders, and transformation tools.

Although Google Photos may not be that helpful when it comes to editing photos, it does a pretty good job at storing high-resolution images and videos with 15GB of free online storage, compared to iCloud’s mere 5GB (which you can upgrade to 50GB for a monthly fee). If you’re planning to go on a trip and take plenty of photos, then it might be smart to sign up for Google Photos to use that extra storage space when you come back.

9. PhotoScape X (Free)

A relatively new photo editing app, PhotoScape X has been gaining popularity with many Mac and PC users since its release in 2008. Its interface is simple but unconventional, with a number of tabs running along the top of the window. Each is responsible for a specific stage of editing. The Viewer tab allows you to browse and organize your photos. After you pick a photo, you can switch to the Editor tab, which includes a broad set of instruments, filters, and effects and a useful feature that enables you to compare the adjusted photo with the original.

The next tabs, including the Batch tab, mainly concentrate on editing and renaming multiple photos at once. The GIF tab allows you to easily create an animated GIF from a group of selected photos.

The downside of PhotoScape X is a lack of selection tools, so all changes are applied to the whole image rather than to a selected part.

10. Gimp (Free)

Gimp is a free open-source photo editing app that has been on the market for over 22 years and is available for Windows, Mac, and even Linux. Unlike many free apps, Gimp doesn’t have any ads or in-app purchases. Its grey interface might seem a little old-fashioned and it may be a bit sluggish when it comes to complex effects, though.

Gimp offers a vast collection of advanced tools that hardly any free photo editor can boast. It has numerous enhancement options such as clone and heal brushes, layers and channels, accurate selection tools, a number of transformation instruments, and, of course, color adjustment controls. Gimp is one of the most powerful tools for enhancing photos and is beloved by so many users for its price (free) and versatility. But if you can’t come to grips with Gimp’s interface, it may be worth paying some cash for a more user-friendly program.

Sep 25, 2020 • Filed to: Solve Mac Problems • Proven solutions

It is possible to recover permanently deleted files from Mac for free. This post offers reviews on the top 10 Free Mac Data Recovery software. Read on and pick up the most suitable one for you to rescue Mac data without paying anything. It is the best way to recover deleted files from Mac.

Top 10 Free Data Recovery Software for Mac

1. Recoverit Mac Data Recovery

When it comes to the free data recovery software for Mac, Recoverit Mac Data Recovery is reckoned to be the best one. With a 96% recovery rate, it enables you to recover lost or deleted data on Mac without any effort and knowledge. It is a 100% safe and reliable free Mac file recovery program to help you retrieve any data from Mac hard drive or any external device on Mac.

Features:

Apple File System (APFS) is now the default file system for the latest macOS, coming with safer data storage, faster write-and-read speed, and larger space available. However, the encryption feature makes data recovery more difficult and even impossible on iMac and MacBook. Recoverit is the software for you to recover lost data from APFS-based Mac. Even more, it supports the Mac data recovery from other different file systems, like HFS, HFS+, FAT/exFAT, and NTFS.

Besides, it supports to recover data from various devices in different situations, such as accidental deletion, power failure, computer shutdown, damaged and corrupted hard disk drive, formatted hard drive, virus attack, lost partition or other data loss scenarios.

On top of that, the best free data recovery tool for Mac is capable of recovering data from a variety of data storage devices, for example, Mac hard drive, external hard disk, USB flash drive, SD card, media players, digital cameras, Drone cameras, camcorders, Android phone, etc. That's why you can be reassured no matter where you lost your Mac data.

Overall Reviews: ★★★★ (5-star rating)

Advantages: all-around scan and deep scan; thumbnails and preview of lost files; recover 1000+ formats of files for free in all situations; intuitive interface.

Improvement: RAID hard drive recovery is not supported; recover 100 MB Mac files for free.

2. Ontrack EasyRecovery Home for Mac

Ontrack EasyRecovery is a user-friendly program for you to perform Mac file recovery precisely under different data loss scenarios, especially for accidentally deleted files. The free Mac file recovery version, with a 1 GB limit, supports you recovering lost data from Mac-based device or recovering deleted backup files from Apple Time Machine for free.

Features:

You can use the free version of this Mac data recovery tool to recover hundreds of file types on different macOS like macOS 10.15, 10.14, 10.13, 10.12, 10.11, and legacy OS. The quick scan and deep scan options search through the storage device more effectively, including internal hard disk, removable media, and RAID hard drive.

Moreover, the free Mac data recovery software claims that it can recover lost data from a hard drive that is encrypted or password protected. After the test, we find that it does sometimes. Like Recoverit Mac Data Recovery, EasyRecovery for Mac also provides the preview function of recoverable files and recovers files with the original file names.

Overall Reviews: ★★★★ (5-star rating)

Advantages: hundreds of supported files, data preview function, a full version of the software available for use in the trial version.

Improvement: low success rate, time-consuming recovery process.

3. Mac Free Any Data Recovery

Mac Free Any Data Recovery can help you reclaim a variety of files from the depths of damaged drives. It is one of the first free data recovery software that provides free trials for users - this data recovery solution is one of the few that allows users to experience the full version of the software for free. This Mac data recovery software is easy to use and kept simple with two scanning modes: quick and deep.

Features:

The common files can be recovered with the free data recovery software for Mac, including photos, videos, music, emails, PDF documents, Office documents, RAR/ZIP files, game files, system data, and so on. It supports the Mac data recovery on Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) or later. So if you want to recover your lost data from Mac OS X 10.8, it is not the option for you.

Overall Reviews: ★★★★ (5-star rating)

Advantages: very speedy scan, retrieve a wide range of files, preview files before Mac recovery.

Improvement: recover 20 files for free only, need to upgrade to the paid version for all features.

4. Cisdem Data Recovery

This Mac data recovery tool provides a free trial for you to scan and preview lost files due to hard drive crash or corruption, formatting, unintentional deletion, improper operation, factory reset, macOS upgrade, and virus attack. It provides five recovery options: Basic Data Recovery, Mac Trash Recovery, External Drive Recovery, Formatted Drive Recovery, and Advanced-Data Recovery. But, after our test, we think that you can directly use the option of 'Advanced-Data Recovery' to make sure your files will not be further damaged after the repeated scan.

Features:

It is an easy-to-use software that allows you to recover a wide range of files quickly. Like Recoverit, the well-recognized powerful data recovery software, it requires you to take 3 steps only for recovering lost data on Mac, that's choosing a data loss scenario, scan and preview recoverable files and finally choose the files to recover. The simple recovery process simplifies your job in Mac data rescue and does save much time.

Overall Reviews: ★★★ (5-star rating)

Advantages: intuitive design, easy-to-use, powerful recovery capacity, preview before recovery.

Improvement: free version only allows files scan and preview, not compatible with other types of operating systems, and has no filtering option for scanning.

5. Data Rescue 5

This Mac hard drive recovery software that allows you to search for and restore data that are lost from damaged drives and accidental deletion from the disk they are stored in. Its free version allows you to recover 2GB of data and it can perform a quick scan, deep scan, deleted files scan, and clone recovered file.

Features:

It comes with 4 options at the beginning to meet your different needs, namely, Start Recovering Files, View Previous Scan Results, Clone, and Create Recovery Drive. The data rescue software for Mac can recover data backups from Time Machine, recognize the duplicate files, and eliminate the recovery of duplications.

Overall Reviews: ★★★ (5-star rating)

Advantages: Intuitive interface, offers a low entry-level pricing plan (PaperByte?) for those who do not need to recover massive amounts of data.

Improvement: slow scanning and recovery speeds, need to fill in an application form to use the free version, only scan and preview available with the free version, only support 100+ file types.

6. Disk Drill

Disk Drill Mac is a great Mac data recovery software that does not only provide data recovery solutions but also data protection capabilities with its Recovery Vault feature. This will prevent accidental deletion and backup failing disks. Like most great data recovery software, it allows users to preview files to help you decide which files to recover.

Features:

The same as many other Mac data recovery tools, it provides a quick scan and deep scan options. With the quick scan, you can recover missing files on Mac in a quick way, while the deep scan technology can dive deeper into your device for lost data. Also, like Recoverit, it supports you recovering files from emptied Mac trash easily and quickly.

It works well with Mac 10.8 or later OS and allows you to filter files and recover data selectively. The drawback is that only 200 different file types are available for data rescue through the Mac file recovery software, including pictures, videos, and documents.

Overall Review: ★★★ (5-star rating)

Advantages: comes with a SMART disk to monitor your hardware's disk status, a preview of files, Recovery Vault feature.

Improvement: free version only allows files scan and preview, difficult to navigate, scan result does not show original file names and folder paths.

7. M3 Mac Data Recovery Free

This free Mac data recovery software is one of the many freeware available to recover deleted data and lost files on your Mac. You will be able to apply the tools to a wide range of file formats that have been compromised by a corrupted hard disk, virus attack, system error, power failure, etc. It can be used on non-Apple products as well.

Features:

It is the free undelete Mac software, compatible with Mac OS 10.7 through High Sierra. What makes it stand out from other Mac data recovery software is the Bitlocker Recovery feature. It allows you to recover Mac data from a deleted or lost Bitlocker encrypted partition. The drawback of the feature is that you have to offer the password for decrypting data.

Overall Review: ★★★★ (5-star rating)

Advantages: high success rate, easy-to-use user interface, full version available for a free trial.

Improvement: slow scan speed, can only use a free trial for a limited amount of time.

8. Lazesoft Data Recovery

It is one of the truly free data recovery software out there that offers data recovery capabilities of the OS X operating system. You can scan and recover an unlimited amount of data using this tool.

Features:

You can recover data from resized partitions, formatted hard drives, memory cards, and iPods. You can also recover photos, videos, music, documents, and applications on Mac HFS/HFS+/FAT/NTFS file systems.

Top Free Photo Editing Software For Mac

Overall Review: ★★★★ (5-star rating)

Advantages: completely free, easy-to-use user interface.

Improvement: does not allow you to preview files, not support the newest Mac OS.

9. PhotoRec

PhotoRec Data Recovery is a free data recovery tool for your Mac. It can recover data that was lost due to a variety of reasons. It offers users 8 recovery modes for users to support you restoring Mac files lost due to deletion, formatting, lost partition, virus attack, and system crash.

Features:

Different types of data can be recovered on Mac, including photos, videos, audios, and emails. The recovered data remains intact in the original condition. The biggest drawback is that it is very hard for even an experienced person to use the Mac data recovery tool. Recovering Mac files with PhotoRec is a little like using the computer command line to perform the recovery process. And it is very easy to do wrong operations and cause further damage to your data.

Overall Reviews: ★★★★ (5-star rating)

Advantages: The ability to preview files before recovering data on Mac, free Mac data recovery without any limit.

Improvement: slower than average scan and recovery speeds, not user-friendly, need professional skill

10. Stellar Phoenix Data Recovery Software

The Mac data recovery tool is one of the best software users can use to get back deleted or lost files from your Mac machines. The name of this app is very significant as it equates to recovered files with a phoenix rising from the ashes!

Overall Review: ★★★ (5-star rating)

Advantages: fast, reliable, easy-to-use.

Improvement: no automated previewer, the free version is for scan and preview only.

Comparison of the Best Free Data Recovery Programs for Mac

Software	Recovery success rate	Price	Supported macOS	Preview before Recovery	Support devices
Recoverit Data Recovery	★★★★★	Free/$79.95 for unlimited files recovery	macOS 10.10 ~ macOS 11	Yes	Mac/HDD/SSD/USB/Memory card
Ontrack EasyRecovery	★★★★	Free for 1GB data/$99 for full version	macOS 10.15 supported	Yes	SSD/HDD/USB/Memory Card
Mac Free Any Data Recovery	★★★	Free	Mac OS X 10.7 - 10.10	Yes	Mac/USB drive/iPod
Cisdem Data Recovery	★★★★	Free trial/$49.99	Mac OS X 10.10 - 10.15	Yes	Mac/hard drive/USB drive/Memory Card
Data Rescue 5	★★★★★	Free demo/$399.00 for professional license	macOS 10.12- 10.15	Yes	Startup drive/External storage
Disk Drill	★★★★	Free trial/$89.00	Mac OS X 10.8.5+ and later	Yes	Internal/external drive/Android/iOS
M3 Mac Data Recovery	★★★★	Free for 1GB data/$89.95	Mac OS X 10.7 - 10.15	Yes	Macintosh HD, hard drive, external hard drive, USB/SD card
Lazesoft Data Recovery	★★★★	Free	Mac OS X 10.5 - 10.9	Yes	Internal/external hard disk, USB drive, memory cards, iPods
PhotoRec	★★★	Free	Mac OS X	Yes	Hard disks, CD-ROMs, memory cards, DD raw image, USB drive
Stellar Phoenix Data Recovery	★★★★	Free trial/$79.99	Mac OS X 10.7 - macOS 10.15	Yes	SSD, HDD, SD card, USB drive

Video Tutorial on How to Recover Deleted Files on Mac

FAQ About Free Data Recovery Software for Mac

How can I recover permanently deleted files from Mac without the software?

Although there is a free file recovery software for Mac, you may wonder if there is a way for you to recover deleted files on Mac without any software. To be honest, it is very nearly impossible to recover permanently deleted files without software. However, if your files are not permanently deleted from the Mac, you can try to restore the deleted files without software by using Terminal.

Open Terminal;
Enter cd.trash;
Type mv xxx ../ and replace the xxx part with the name of the deleted file; Hit Enter;
Now you can open Finder and search for the deleted files by name. The deleted file will appear.

Is there any completely free data recovery software for Mac?

You might have noticed that although there are lots of 'free' Macintosh file recovery programs, they are not completely free. Most of the free Mac data recovery programs offer the free version with limited features or provide a free trial of the full version with limits.

You can find some open-source data recovery tools that enable you to recover deleted files for Mac completely free, but open-source tools can be modified freely and are not supported by professional developing teams. Most of the completely free data recovery programs have been updated for years. Therefore, using completely free recovery tools is not safe and might fail to get back the files you need.

How does data recovery on Mac work?

Data recovery is trickier for Mac computers than Windows since SSDs are more commonly-used in MacBook and there is System Integrity Protection (SIP) on OS X El Capitan and later. With SIP enabled on your Mac, applications are unable to access the essential data in the system disk, which is a must for accessing the deleted files.

To use data recovery software on a Mac, you need to disable SIP first. Although SIP is disabled, it doesn't necessarily mean that the deleted files can be recovered. What a data recovery program does is to detect the bits of the deleted files from the hard drive and piece them back together. That's why the data recovery program usually takes hours or days to deeply scan the hard drive. Data Recovery is a time-consuming process.

How to select your Mac data recovery software?

After testing and reviewing the 10 best free Mac data recovery software, we can conclude all the key attributes that a piece of powerful Mac data recovery software should have.

Support a wide range of files. There are so many types and formats of data we need and use every day. So Mac data recovery software needs to recover almost all kinds of data, at least photos, videos, music, audios, and Office documents.
Support for Mac data recovery in all situations. Data loss can happen due to numerous factors, such as accidental deletion, virus attack, emptied Mac trash, hard drive corruption, formatting, and lost partitions.
Support a variety of devices. We need different electronic devices to help us keep data preserved and protected, especially digital cameras, Mac computers, external hard drives, cell phones, flash drives, and so on.
Straightforward interface. Not everyone is an expert in computer running algorithms or data recovery technology. So for an ideal Mac data recovery program, ease of use is necessary.
Free Mac data recovery. As we can see, not all free Mac data recovery software can help you recover files on Mac free. If the software comes with only free scan and preview functions. It is not recognized as a free one.

What is the best free data recovery software for Mac?

After viewing the above content, we think that everyone has their own choice. You can choose your software according to your own needs. For example, if you are a professional computing expert, you can choose PhotoRec Data Recovery. It needs professional skills and has a very complicated recovery process, but it can help you recover files on Mac for free. However, if you want to recover Mac data more quickly and easily, it might be not a good option.

In contrast, Recoverit can help you recover lost or deleted files on Mac in 3 steps. It requires no professional skills in computing and technology. It also enables you to preview different types and formats of data on Mac.