How to Recover Deleted Messages on iPhone (5 Ways)

Dec. 5, 2024

There can be instances when you wish to delete some old messages tosave storage space on your iPhone, but end up wiping some important texts. Well, this can happen to anyone. I know how frustrating it is to realize that you’ve accidentally deleted important messages, but you need not panic as there are some ways to get them back. In this article, we’ve mentioned 5 ways to recover deleted messages on your iPhone. Without any ado, let’s get started.

Method 1: Recover Deleted messages from Recently Deleted

With iOS 16 and iPadOS 16, Apple added aRecently Deletedfolder to the Messages app that lets you recover deleted messages on your iPhone without any backup. The only limitation of this feature is that you canrestore a message only within 30 daysof deleting it. So, if you wish to recover a recently deleted text on your iPhone, make sure to check the Recently Deleted Folder before you try any other steps.

Here’s how to recover deleted text messages without a backup:

There can be instances when you accidentally deleted an important message, and it’s been over 30 days. In such cases, you can recover deleted iMessage from iCloud backup. Bear in mind that this method is only useful if you have an iCloud backup saved before the message was deleted. Otherwise, that backup won’t have those messages.

Note:

If the last backup date is before you deleted the message, you can restore the backup to retrieve the deleted messages on your iPhone. However, this method has a drawback. You’ll have toreset your iPhoneand set it up again to restore the backup. If you don’t mind doing that, here’s how to proceed:

If you don’t rely on automatic iCloud backups or there’s no iCloud storage available on your iPhone, but you have abackup of your iPhone dataon your Mac, you are still in luck. You can recover the deleted message by restoring the iPhone backup from your Mac. However, just like the iCloud method, this also requires a backup before the date of deleting the message, and you have to reset & restore your iPhone.

Here’s how you can restore your deleted iPhone messages using Finder on Mac:

If you’ve taken a backup on a Windows computer, you can retrieve deleted messages using iTunes. This method works similarly to the Finder one. Below are the steps on how to restore your deleted iPhone messages using iTunes:

Your iPhone will now start the restoring process. Once restored, you will get back deleted iMessages on your iPhone.

Another way to recover deleted text messages on an iPhone is to contact your network provider. This only works for text messages and not iMessage. Your network provider might keep a copy of your text messages, at least for some time. So, there’s a chance that you can access them. However, the procedure can be complicated and time-consuming. To get a record of texts from your network provider, you might have to go through a lengthy procedure to prove your identity, tell them when got that message, who the sender was, and a lot of permissions. Also, if those messages were sent a long ago, the provider may not even have a copy.

That’s how you can recover deleted text messages and iMessages on your iPhone.

Use the ‘Recently Deleted’ filter to retrieve deleted messages on iPhone without backup, but remember this method works for only 30 days of deleting a message.

You can use the Recently Deleted folder in the Messages app, Finder on Mac, or iTunes on Windows method to retrieve deleted text messages without iCloud.