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PLEASE HELP! Deleted ENTIRE imovie library.

I have accidentally deleted my entire imovie library.

Not only does it have many, many, home movies, but my 13 year old son's projects that he has spent hours making. We are begging for help.


The program was hanging up. In trying to fix it, by accident, I placed the library file in the trash and deleted it from the trash.

It was 350+gb of material.

I would dearly like to recover it.

I have looked in the libraries for movies and such, to no avail.

It appears that the imovie app is complete new and unused...


I am now running a disk utility (easeus) looking for recoverable files.

I am wondering what type of files I should be looking for and in what drives?

Is there a file extension I can filter for? Any help would be appreciated.



iMac 27" 5K, 10.13

Posted on Feb 13, 2019 6:08 PM

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Question marked as Apple recommended

Hi, Dan,


If you have a Time Machine backup you can restore your library from there.


If no Time Machine backup, you might try looking in the iMovie Backups folder. To get there follow this file path from your desktop Finder menu: Go/Home/Library/Containers/com.apple.iMovieApp/Data/Library/Caches/iMovie

Backups. When you get there you will see a list of previous backups of your iMovie library. Click on one dated just before you deleted your library. iMovie will open in the backup library. See if your projects are intact.


-- Rich

Posted on Feb 13, 2019 7:22 PM

4 replies
Question marked as Apple recommended

Feb 13, 2019 7:22 PM in response to Dan-peters

Hi, Dan,


If you have a Time Machine backup you can restore your library from there.


If no Time Machine backup, you might try looking in the iMovie Backups folder. To get there follow this file path from your desktop Finder menu: Go/Home/Library/Containers/com.apple.iMovieApp/Data/Library/Caches/iMovie

Backups. When you get there you will see a list of previous backups of your iMovie library. Click on one dated just before you deleted your library. iMovie will open in the backup library. See if your projects are intact.


-- Rich

Feb 13, 2019 10:36 PM in response to Dan-peters

The iMovie Backups folder contains the codes for the projects but not the original media itself. What probably happened is that when you deleted the library you deleted the Original Media folders within it that contain the original media for the projects. At this point, I think that all you can do is re-import the source files, if you have them.


As a last effort you might control click on the backup library and select Show Package Contents. You will see a list of projects that contain the data and codes for each project. You cannot play them there, as they can only be played when accessed from the iMovie app itself. However, open a couple of the project folders and see if they contain an Original Media folder that is populated with media. Do not move or change anything in the package contents or any of its subfolders, or you risk corrupting the back up library. If there is media in there you can copy (not move) it to your desktop and re-import it into the project in the iMovie app.


There might be some recovery software that you can google that might enable you to recover your files. I'm just not familiar with that area since I have never had to use recovery software.


-- Rich




-- Rich

PLEASE HELP! Deleted ENTIRE imovie library.

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