How to Undo an Action on a Mac

This practical guide walks through how to undo an action on a Mac, explains the main requirements, and highlights common issues that may appear along the way.

Undo: The easy way 'to correct mistakes'

If you make a typo in Pages, draw the wrong line in Photoshop, or even move a file to the wrong place in the Finder, you can fix all of these mistakes — and more — using the feature. 'Undo', built into most Mac apps. When you do an Undo, you are undoing the last action you just performed, and restoring something to the state it was in before you made the change.

Conversely, the Redo feature allows you to repeat the last action you performed before Undo. Redo can be understood as an undo command for Undo.

On macOS, Undo derives from a very popular 1970s desktop software called Xerox Alto—specifically, in a word processor called Bravo. Apple borrowed many interface elements from Alto software when designing the Apple Lisa (1983), and brought them to the Macintosh a year later. Today, Undo and Redo are essentially a common part of the experience of most mainframe operating system platforms.

How to Undo and Redo using the 'Edit' menu

One of the easiest ways to perform an Undo action on a Mac is to use an option in the menu bar at the top of the screen.

When you need to undo an action you just performed, hover your mouse over the menu bar at the top of the screen, select 'Edit', then click 'Undo' in the menu that appears.

'Undo' is almost always the first option, and will also sometimes change to include the action you're undoing, such as 'Undo Move' or 'Undo Typing'.

Similarly, you can also 'Redo' an action using the Edit menu. Click 'Edit' in the menu bar, then select 'Redo'. This is usually the second option in the menu.

If you do not see the Undo or Redo options appear here, you can use the preparation method mentioned below.

How to Undo and Redo with Keyboard Shortcuts

If you find the above mouse operation too cumbersome, you can use keyboard shortcuts to quickly execute Undo and Redo commands.

To Undo a recent action, press Command + Z on a Mac keyboard (similar to Ctrl + Z on a Windows PC.).

After Undo, you can usually also Redo the action by pressing Shift + Command + Z on your keyboard.

It's all as simple as that. Some apps have multiple levels of Undo, allowing you to undo dozens of steps, while others only support one undo. Good luck!