File recovered, but nowhere to be found

Hi all, i was working last night and illustrator decided to crash, and i had not saved in quite awhile (im on mac tahoe 26.0 and illustrator 29.2.1). when i reopen, i get the recovery pop-up, but i have no idea how to access/find these files. Tutorials online say to find the .aid file in illustrator recover data in finder, and to just open that in illustrator, but that is not physcially possible. I tried copying the recovery file, and giving it an .ai file extension instead, but that wont open in illustrator either. any tips please? when i reopen the normal file (not recovered file) it just loads to my last save. I have not saved the file since adobe crashed and i lost my progress.