No "Put back" option for most of the files in Trash

I don't know why it happened

if I drag something without literally "open" Finder (like drag files from the preview) to Trash,

Then you actually do know how it happened. When you Move to Trash in Finder, it records the original location in metadata. It uses that metadata to allow “Put Back.“

If you move to trash from some other app, Finder doesn’t know where it came from.

I just deleted several pdf files from Download folder and wanted to recover them from trash but there is no "put back" option at all. I am using Monterey.

If you know they were from the Downloads folder, just drag them back into Downloads. Put Back is just a convenience—not required.

It may depend on how the files were deleted. If Finder was used then there should normally be a "Put Back" option. However, I noticed that the option wasn't available when I used other programs (e.g. Adobe Lightroom) to delete files.

- Pie Lover