What really happens when you empty the bin
Emptying the Recycle Bin removes the pointer to your file, not the file's bytes. The data sits in the drive's free space until the operating system reuses that space for something new. So the sooner you scan — and the less you use the drive in the meantime — the better your odds.
Start with Quick Scan
On a Windows NTFS drive, Quick Scan reads the Master File Table and can restore recently emptied files with their original names, folders and timestamps in under a minute. If Quick Scan doesn't find it — the entry was already overwritten or the drive isn't NTFS — switch to Deep Scan, which then carves the drive by signature. On a Mac's APFS disk, recovery is signature-based (contents come back, names don't).
Free for JPG & PNG
Recovering JPG and PNG is free. For documents (PDF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX), video, audio, archives and camera RAW, pairing the free RecoverHelper mobile app unlocks every format and partial recovery — free.