How to Recover Deleted Photos from Windows 10 or 11

Deleted photos from Windows 10 laptop and how to recover?

“I have some important photos on my Dell laptop with Windows 10 installed. I was planning to move it to an SD card but somehow these photos are deleted. I don’t know what to do. Is there someone who can tell me how to recover deleted photos from Windows 10 for free? Thanks a lot!”

4 ways to recover (permanently) deleted photos in Windows 10/11

As a media that records people’s time and other useful information, photos can be very important. Usually, photos are stored on phones, computers, camera,s and so on. You can easily recover deleted phone photos from "Recently Deleted" section and the operation can be different when photos are removed from a Windows computer.

If you have deleted photos via “Ctrl” + “D” or “Delete” option, you can just undo the operation or retrieve the lost photos from Recycle Bin. If you have permanently deleted photos from Windows 10/11, you can recover the deleted files using File History or professional data recovery for Windows.

Restore deleted photos on Windows 10/11 using Undo feature

Windows Undo feature enables you to withdraw actions like photo file deletion. All you need to do is to press “Ctrl” + “Z” at the same time or right-click the blank space and choose “Undo Delete”. After that, you can see the deleted photos get back on your computer.

Restore deleted photos on Windows 10/11 from Recycle Bin

Undo takes effect only for recent actions. If you have deleted the photos for a period of time, you can recover them from Recycle Bin.

Step 1. On your Windows 10/11 computer, double click the Recycle Bin icon to open Recycle Bin.

Step 2. Select the deleted photos that you still want to keep, right-click the, and choose “Restore”.

Then, you can find out the photos appears again on your computer.

✍ Bonus Tip: what if you can’t find out Recycle Bin on your Windows PC?

Sometimes, you may find that there is no Recycle Bin icon on your computer desktop. Then, you can add Recycle Bin by adjusting Registry.

First of all, press “Windows” + “R”, type in “regedit” to open Registry Editor; then, go to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DesktopName\Space, right-click the blank space, go to "New" > "Key" and input  {645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}; finally, close Registry Editor and reboot your computer. You’ll find Recycle Bin shows up on the desktop and you can restore your deleted photos from it.

Recover permanently deleted photos from File History (with backup)

If you have permanently gotten rid of photos from Windows 10/11 by pressing “Shift” + “Del”, you won’t be able to find out the deleted pictures on Recycle Bin. Supposed that you have enabled File History feature to backup files, you can restore the permanently deleted photos from File History backup.

Step 1. In the Search box, type in “Restore your files with File History” and hit “Enter” key to open it.

Step 2. In the pop-up window, find the deleted photos that you need to retrieve, choose them and choose the Restore icon to restore the deleted photos to the original location.

Note: If you want to restore the deleted pictures to an assigned place rather than the old location, you can click the Gear icon, choose "Save as" and choose the place that you want to hold the restored photos.

✍ Bonus Tip: How to enable File History on Windows 10/11

If you don’t know how to enable File History, keep reading!

Step 1. Press “Windows” + “R”, input “control” to open Control Panel.

Step 2. In the Control Panel, search for “File History” and open it.

Step 3. Select a network or external drive as the location to save the backup file and click “Turn on”.

Recover permanently deleted photos without backup

If there is no photos backup, you can directly restore permanently deleted pictures from your computer using free & professional data recovery software for Windows PCs, MyRecover.

It doesn’t only enable you to recover photos that are permanently deleted by “Shift+Del” key, but also to restore photos even after you have emptied Recycle Bin. If you lose your pictures after system crash, it also can be helpful! Free download this recovery tool and walk through how to use it to recover deleted photos on Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7.

Step 1. Install and run AOMEI Data Recovery, hover the mouse over the drive that contains your deleted photos, and click Scan.

Step 2. The tool will atomically scan the drive with Quick Scan & Deep Scan to locate the deleted files and other missing files.

Step 3. Click “Deleted files”, and choose the photos that you want to recover.

Step 4. Click "Recover xx files" and choose a destination path to save the restored photos.

FAQs

1. How do I find recently deleted photos on Windows 10?

From the above, we can realize that the recently deleted photos can be in Recycle Bin.

2. How to recover deleted photos from SD Card in Windows 10?

If you connected SD card to Windows 10 PC and deleted photos from SD card, the deleted photos won’t appear in Recycle Bin. You can restore these deleted photos from SD card using AOMEI Data Recovery.

3. Are permanently deleted photos gone forever Windows 10?

No! After permanently removing pictures in Windows 10 by Shift + Del, you still can restore them via professional data recovery software.