restore old messages
how can i pull up old messages from august 2022?
iPhone XR, iOS 14
Question marked as
Messages that you deleted? Or messages you didn't delete?
If you did not delete them, then you can go to a message thread and scroll to the top, it will load more, on and on until you get to the oldest message there.
In Settings > Messages, you'd need to have Keep Messages set to 1 year or Forever. If it's set to 30 days, then they should have been deleted automatically.
If the messages were deleted, then odds are you will never get them back.
In order to get deleted messages back from August, you would have to meet both of the following conditions:
- Settings > [your name] > iCloud > Messages, this switch must be OFF (and had been OFF in August)
- You would have to have made an iPhone backup prior to deleting those messages.. and have not overwritten that backup since deleting the messages, which I think is pretty unlikely.
If you use auto backup in iCloud, each new backup replaces the prior one.
If you were backing up to your computer, same deal.
If you were backing up to your computer, and that computer happens to be a Mac with Time Machine backups setup.. THEN you might be able to roll the Mac back to find that backup.
Any of these scenarios, if you find a backup, you can't just go in and retrieve the messages. You'd have to restore everything, which means you'd likely lose a bunch of other stuff between August and today.