Photos Disappeared when I was selecting multiple

I was holding down command button to select multiple individual photos from an album to upload for Harvey Norman photo centre, I took my finger off command button and all the selected photos disappeared. They are not in recently deleted can't find them anywhere!! Can anyone please help :)

iMac 24″, macOS 12.6

Posted on Aug 1, 2025 10:45 PM

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Posted on Aug 2, 2025 07:17 AM

Have you looked in Hidden? It sounds like you could have accidentally hit some odd combination of keys. ⌘L is "Hide Photos," so that might be it. There is no key combination that will remove pictures permanently from the Library-- you have to go through "Recently Deleted" to fully erase an image.


Also, you may have some filters on, so look at "View>Filter by" to be sure you're seeing All Items.


You can also do a search by date or topic to find the pictures. If you do this in a Smart Album, you can include Photos Is Hidden to search that album. As with the Hidden view, you'll have to enter your password.


Let us know what you find, what works and what doesn't. It could help others…

3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Aug 2, 2025 07:17 AM in response to Kristie1810

Have you looked in Hidden? It sounds like you could have accidentally hit some odd combination of keys. ⌘L is "Hide Photos," so that might be it. There is no key combination that will remove pictures permanently from the Library-- you have to go through "Recently Deleted" to fully erase an image.


Also, you may have some filters on, so look at "View>Filter by" to be sure you're seeing All Items.


You can also do a search by date or topic to find the pictures. If you do this in a Smart Album, you can include Photos Is Hidden to search that album. As with the Hidden view, you'll have to enter your password.


Let us know what you find, what works and what doesn't. It could help others…

Aug 4, 2025 07:45 AM in response to Kristie1810

I'm flummoxed! I can't think of anything within Photos that does this! And they would have to be in Hidden, in Recently Deleted, or in the visible Library. If you know the filename of one of them, you could try using Spotlight to hunt for it. Spotlight can look everywhere on the Mac, but no other "search" apps, including Finder, can search for file names in Photos. But it's hard to see any place they could be that you haven't looked.


Do you have a cat? A cat might have just pushed them off…

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Photos Disappeared when I was selecting multiple

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