Help · Guides · Pangalin Space Manager

How to see what you did, and undo it.

By Grant and Brad, who make Pangalin's apps · Updated 14 October 2026

Pangalin Space Manager records everything it does. History shows what you've freed and moved, brings moved folders and files back from an external drive, and keeps a log of every action. Edit › Undo reverses your last action while the app is open, and anything that went to the Trash can come back until you empty it.

The History page

Choose Go › History (⌘7). Viewing History is free, with or without a licence. From the top:

• Totals: Safely freed on this Mac (and since when), Moved to external drives, and Moves you can reinstate. A total appears once there's something to count.
• Automatic moves: each run of an automatic move rule, with Put All Back.
• Moves you can roll back: every move to an external drive that can still be brought back, with where it came from, where it went, when and how big it is.
• Action log: the latest actions, one per line, including where each item that went to the Trash came from. You can select and copy the text.

Bring back something you moved

1. Plug in the external drive the item was moved to.
2. Choose Go › History (⌘7).
3. Under Moves you can roll back, find the item and click Reinstate. It starts straight away.

Pangalin Space Manager checks there's room on your Mac first; if there isn't, nothing changes and the shortcut keeps working. It copies the item back, removes the shortcut, and moves the drive's copy to the Trash. To bring every move back, click Reinstate all (…) and confirm with Reinstate all.

This works for a single moved file, such as one AI model file, as well as for folders. In Pangalin Space Manager 3.48.0, Reinstate failed for a single file with “the copy produced no files”; the file was always safe on the drive, and 3.48.1 fixed it. If that happened to you, update and click Reinstate again. Moved folders were never affected.

Reinstating is free, with or without a licence. It doesn't give back any of your free 5 GB.

Undo your last action

1. Open the Edit menu. The undo item names what it will undo, for example Undo Move to Trash — …, Undo Move of … or Undo Shrink — ….
2. Choose it, or press ⌥⌘Z.

Items that went to the Trash return to where they were, a move comes back from the drive, and shrunk files return to full size. Choosing it again undoes the action before that. Undo is free.

• It only works while Pangalin Space Manager is open. Once you quit, use History for moves, or the Trash for everything else.
• It's greyed out while Pangalin Space Manager is busy with another action.
• If something new now sits where an item used to be, Undo leaves that item in the Trash rather than replace the new one, and says so. Anything no longer in the Trash can't be restored.
• Plain ⌘Z stays with text editing, so it never puts files back by accident.

Get files back from the Trash

Most things Pangalin Space Manager removes go to the Trash. Finder's Put Back isn't offered for files an app moves to the Trash, so you drag them back yourself.

1. In Pangalin Space Manager, choose Go › History (⌘7) and look in the Action log. After the date and time, each line beginning TRASH shows an item's original location. The log shows the latest 300 entries.
2. Open the Trash from the Dock. View › Sort By › Date Added puts the most recent removals together.
3. Open a second Finder window at the original folder. For a folder inside your Library, choose Go › Go to Folder… (⇧⌘G) and paste the path.
4. Drag each item from the Trash back into its folder.

If the Trash already holds something with the same name, the item may have been renamed slightly, for example with a time added.

What can't be undone

• Emptying the Trash. It's permanent. Only a backup, such as Time Machine, can bring anything back. Keep a current backup before big clean-ups.
• Anything removed permanently, such as items already in the Trash, a clean-up with Skip the Trash — remove permanently now switched on, or leftover macOS installer data. Pangalin Space Manager labels these before you confirm.
• Caches that were cleared. Apps rebuild them as you use them.
• Deleted local Time Machine snapshots. You can no longer go back to that point.
• Another tool's clean-up command run from Janitors.
• Apps removed with Homebrew. Uninstall with Homebrew deletes the app instead of moving it to the Trash, so Undo brings back only the leftovers that went to the Trash. Reinstall the app with Homebrew to get it back.
• Delete from Trash… (in Settings › Startup Items) permanently deletes the apps you named from the Trash.
• Privacy permissions reset when you uninstall an app. The app asks for each permission again if you install it later.
• Shrunk files after you quit. They stay compressed, which does them no harm: they open exactly as before.

Related guides

• Free up space safely
• Move big folders to an external drive, and put them back
• Shrink files without losing anything
• Uninstall an app with Pangalin Space Manager

Checked against Pangalin Space Manager 3.48.1, 14 October 2026.