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You probably know how easy it is to accidentally erase an important text from your iPhone. But how do you get it back then? How often did you find yourself searching for a specific text message with a confirmation code, a tracking number or even a password? Did I delete it right away? Was it in that thread? Did I just delete the whole thread?
Many believe their text messages are safe and secure for good and even if they were erased by them there's a magical place somewhere they are stored. May it be your provider keeping a copy of them? For a text message (SMS), that is not the case. Once you delete it, it's pretty much gone. The good news is – it's recoverable. And we will provide you with the instructions on one of the most efficient ways to recover deleted text messages on iPhone with Disk Drill.
All my text messages disappeared all of a sudden. Four people have texted me since and in search I can find the text of their old messages but cannot open them but no other contacts messages.
— Source: Apple Communities
Desperate cries for help like the one above are, unfortunately, not as rare as they should be. Indeed, there are many iPhone users whose messages have suddenly disappeared from their devices, often leading to the loss of important information.
But why? What can cause messages to suddenly disappear? Let’s take a look at several possible causes:
The Messages app can be configured to keep messages for 30 days, 1 year, or forever. Messages older than the set age are automatically deleted.
A faulty iOS update can cause all kinds of unexpected behavior, including causing messages to disappear.
We all make mistakes, and sometimes we’re not even aware of making them. You wouldn’t be the first person in the world to wake up after a night of drinking with your messages deleted and your memories of the night before cloudy.
iPhone users don’t have to worry about malware too much, but that doesn’t mean they can be completely careless either. Cybercriminals are constantly coming up with more capable malware, so don’t assume that your messages are 100% safe.
When you jailbreak your iPhone, you allow apps to run with root privileges, meaning they can do just about anything, even delete your messages.
iPhones come with flash-based memory chips. Such chips are very durable and last a long time, but they can certainly fail or become corrupted just like any other storage device.
As you can see, there are quite a few reasons for messages to disappear suddenly, which only highlights the importance of iPhone backups.
Start by downloading Disk Drill from its official website. Once downloaded, install it just like you would normally. Disk Drill is compatible with all recent versions of macOS, and it runs even on Macs with Apple silicon processors.
Next, you need to connect your iPhone to your Mac and tap Trust on your phone when asked if you want to trust your Mac. You can then launch Disk Drill and go through the initial setup to configure basic settings and give Disk Drill the permissions it needs to scan your device and recover text messages.
To undelete lost text messages, you need to first select the iPhones & iPads category from the left pane and then choose your iPhone. Before you click the Search for lost data button to recover deleted text messages from your iPhone, you should close all apps (including iTunes) that are accessing your device.
Wait for Disk Drill to finish scanning your iPhone. You can then filter the search results by choosing the Messages filter in the left pane. This will allow you to easily review all recoverable text messages before retrieving them back
Finally, select all text messages you want to recover and click the Recover button to bring them back. You can also click the Show in Finder button to mount selected files as a disk, allowing you to retrieve them using Finder.
Incoming text messages may include all kinds of attachments, such as photos and appointments. When opened, attachments are sometimes processed and stored by other apps, such as Photos and Calendar. If your main goal is to recover attachments—not text messages themselves—then you should also explore all the different places where they may be stored.
Disk Drill is not able of protecting data on your iPhones or iPads, but for your desktop Mac or Windows, it's becoming an unbelievably handy tool. Disk Drill will enable data protection and prevent an accidental data loss without any external data storage, or NAS. Read more about our Recovery Vault and Guaranteed Recovery algorithms.
As an iPhone user, you can conveniently back up your iPhone to the cloud using iCloud. All you need to do is enable the cloud backup feature from the Settings app > [your name] > iCloud > iCloud Backup.
You can create a full backup of your entire iPhone from Finder. All you need to do is connect your iPhone to your Mac with a cable, launch Finder, select your iPhone, and select the “Back up all of the data on your iPhone to this Mac” option. If you’re using an older version of macOS, then you can do the same using iTunes.
There are various third-party iPhone backup software solutions that can create a complete backup of your device, including all text messages. Third-party backup software typically costs some money, but its price may be well worth keeping your text messages safely backed up.
It’s possible to enable text message forwarding from your iPhone's Settings app to automatically send all text messages to another device. This way, your text messages will always be on two devices, so you’ll be able to access them even if one device gets stolen or damaged.
Disk Drill is highly effective when it comes to restoring deleted text messages from iOS devices, but it’s not the only way how to retrieve deleted text messages on iPhone. Let’s take a look at several other methods that you can use without installing any third-party software.
Do you back up your iPhone to iCloud, Apple’s cloud storage service? If you do, then you’re in luck because you can retrieve them without much effort. Just know that you’ll have to temporary erase all content and settings before restoring everything back from a backup. If this makes you anxious, feel free to come back to this method later:
If you’ve recently backed up your iPhone using Finder or iTunes, then you can easily use your local backup to get deleted messages back on your iPhone. Here’s what you need to do if you’re running macOS Catalina or newer:
If you’re running a version of macOS that’s older than macOS Catalina, then you need to use iTunes to recover your text messages from a backup. The recovery process itself is basically the same, however. The biggest difference is that the Restore Backup button is located in the Summary tab.
It’s possible to set up any iPhone running a recent version of iOS (newer than iOS 8.1) to let you receive and send SMS and MMS text messages on your Mac. If you’ve done so already, retrieving them is a matter of opening the Messages app:
Alternatively, you can look for your text messages on other iOS devices that are connected to the same iCloud account as your iPhone.
Some phone carriers let their customers back up all sent and received text messages to their online accounts. This recovery method is particularly useful because it doesn’t depend on iOS at all, which means that you can use it even if all you have is an older Android smartphone. To find out if your phone carrier lets you undelete text messages, we recommend you contact its customer support number and ask directly. That’s the fastest way how to find out if their recovery is possible.
If you can’t access your text messages because your iPhone has been physically damaged, then we recommend you don’t attempt to repair the damage at home. Instead, you should send your iPhone to a professional data recovery center and let well-equipped professionals retrieve your data for you. Here’s how most data recovery centers operate:
If everything else fails, then you can always ask the sender (or senders) whose messages you have lost to send them again.
To resent a message on an iPhone:
By following these instructions, the sender should be able to resend any message to you with ease.
Disk Drill implements several iPhone recovery algorithms and actually Deep Scan is not of them. However, it does help with plenty of other data recovery scenarios. It's good to know that Disk Drill does provide you with a choice of data recovery methods in case one of them doesn't produce the anticipated result.
Updated on by Disk Drill Team
Yes, it’s possible to get back text messages that were deleted from your iPhone—you just need to use the right recovery technique. Text messages are stored in the CSV file format, which can be recovered using readily available data recovery software applications and opened just like any other plain text file.
You can retrieve erased text messages that were stored on your iPhone using data recovery software like Disk Drill:
Yes, you can recover deleted text messages even if you don’t have a backup. However, you will be able to do so only until they become overwritten with new data. Since you can never know when that will happen, it’s a good idea to begin their recovery as soon as possible.
Whenever you receive a text message from an unknown number, the Messages app hides it in the Unknown Senders tab. Here’s how you can find hidden text messages:
You can change this behavior by going to Settings > Messages and turning off/on the Filter Unknown Senders option.
Yes, Disk Drill can be used to recover deleted text messages from any iPhone. In fact, Disk Drill makes this incredibly easy thanks to its intuitive user interface and powerful data recovery algorithms.
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macOS 10.15.7–15.x, 62.9 MB
Use Disk Drill 1.x-5.x for OS X 10.5+
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