How to get erased text messages on iphone

This might surprise you, but if you ever wanted to find and recover a deleted text message on iOS 15, there was really no way. The only thing you could do is hope you had a backup with that specific text, and then restore your iPhone, but that's an arduous and laborious process -- for what should be a simple task

How to get erased text messages on iphone

Fortunately that's now been simplified with iOS 16.

Instead of dealing with restoring a backup, you can now find the deleted texts on your device and recover them into the Messages app with just a few taps. The process is simple, but you need to know where to look before you can recover any deleted text messages. Here's how.

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First find your deleted text messages

All of your deleted text messages can be found in the Messages app. To find your trashed messages, open Messages and tap the Filters option in the top left of your text threads. Here you can filter your text messages by known senders, unread messages and more. However, the option we want is Recently Deleted.

How to get erased text messages on iphone

You only have 30 days to recover a deleted text message.

Nelson Aguilar/CNET

A list of your recently text messages will appear, showing phone numbers or contacts, number of messages and days left until permanent deletion. This will include both entire message threads and individual texts that are deleted. However, you'll be able to see (and recover) deleted messages only if they've been deleted in the last 30 days, so you have to act relatively fast.

Also, you can't see the actual messages themselves, so you'll have to recover them by recognizing the contact name or phone number. Once recovered, you'll then be able to read the texts.

Then recover your deleted text messages

If you want to recover a text message, tap on the thread or message so that it's selected, hit Recover on the bottom right, and then tap Recover Message in the pop-up that appears. You can also recover all of your deleted text messages at once -- don't select any message and then just tap Recover All.

How to get erased text messages on iphone

You can also recover all deleted text messages at once.

Nelson Aguilar/CNET

Your recovered text messages will appear in sequential order from when they were either sent or received, so you may have to scroll a bit through your existing texts to find them, especially if they're old and you have a great deal of new messages cluttering up your inbox.

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In iOS 16, Apple has brought some welcome updates to its stock Messages app. One of these is the ability to recover messages you have deleted from conversations. Keep reading to learn how it works.

How to get erased text messages on iphone

In ‌iOS 16‌, Apple has added a new "Recently Deleted" section to its Messages app that aggregates all of the text messages that you've deleted in the last 30 days. That means if you accidentally delete a message and wish to recover it, you can now do so right in the Messages app interface.

Here's how to recover a deleted message on an iPhone or iPad running ‌iOS 16‌ or iPadOS 16.

  1. In the Messages app, navigate to the main Messages screen where filters like Known Senders and Unknown Senders can be found.
  2. Tap Recently Deleted.
  3. Tap the messages that you want to recover so that a blue check mark appears next to each one. (Note that each message show the days remaining before automatic deletion.)
  4. Tap Recover in the bottom-right corner of the screen.
  5. Tap Recover Message[s] in the pop-over to confirm.

How to get erased text messages on iphone

That's all there is to it. You can use the same "Recently Deleted" screen to permanently delete messages, by tapping them and then selecting Delete in the bottom-left corner. Note that permanently deleting a message from Apple's servers may take up to 40 days.

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