Unable to recover messages on my iPhone 15 Pro

I’ve recently been having this issue but I think I fixed it. I ended up permanently deleting anything in my deleted messages settings so it wasn’t even “opened” for anything to go back into it. Then I reset my iPhone settings (all), it brought back some conversations that I redeleted and cleared again, but keeping the deleted messages section empty has prevented any threads from going back there or deleting themselves since then.

Just to close the loop. This problem seems to be fixed for me now but I am not sure how. It could be either:

1) I upgraded to 17.6.1

2) I made sure to restore the deleted messages on all my devices (iPhone, iPad, MacBook and desktop mac)

i unfortunately did both things at the same time so not sure what fixed it (or maybe it was just a coincidence). But after I did the above, the messages that kept on being deleted stopped being deleted. It has been several weeks now.

I was having the same issue - I turned off iCloud sync for messages on my MacBook Pro which seems to have resolved the issue. It's been a week, so far so good.

I’m having this issue too. It stopped going back into the recently deleted folder for a few days after the IOS 18 update but now it’s started back again and I only have 3 days left before it permanently deletes!!! For some reason when I reset my settings on my iPhone the latest time (I’ve done this over 5 times) it recovered all messages I’ve deleted including the one that keeps auto deleting everyday. I have called apple and spoke to so many agents none of which have a clue how to fix this. The last person I spoke to was a senior advisor who said if the problem persists they will have an engineer look at it.

I have done so much troubleshooting i.e, factory reset, resetting all settings on my iPhone, logging in and out of my Apple ID, turning iMessage off an on. None of it has worked. I have an iPhone 15 pro and just like everyone it’s only one contacts thread that keeps getting deleted. Another thing I noticed is it only goes into the recently deleted folder every time my phone syncs the messages to iCloud which is odd.

Apple needs to have a solution for this asap otherwise what is the point in having a recovered option if your messages just keep deleting!

knock on wood, I'm not sure why or what I did, but I have had no problems for the last two months. The only thing different is I use Verizon Cloud for backups instead of using ICloud. You might want to try turning ICloud off. Good luck.

Was it set to --> Go to Settings > Messages > Keep Messages. Ensure it's set to "Forever."

I would advise that you call apple support. If several of us continue to call they might do something about it.

Good Luck

Hello~ Take a look at the prior post here by *SravanKrA* and see if that information helps you.

~Katana-San~

I am working with apple by screen recording when this happens. She said she would pass this on to the engineers. I not sure how prompt Apple is to solving problems. This happened after the last update to 17.5.1.

I thought they had it fixed after no deletions for 5 days, however it happened again on my IPhone but not my iPad. My iPad is still okay even being linked to my phone which is strange. My iPad has gone back to what was originally left in my messages before this all started happening.

unfortunately Apple called on the 4th day and after thinking it was okay, they closed my case. I have not had time to call them back yet,

I'm also starting to think I cannot delete any texts now because my phone thinks I'm trying to clear space or something. I have one conversation with over 5000 messages that keeps getting deleted. The worst part is that I will recover them, they get deleted again and each time they are going to be permanently deleted with less and less days to recover. Please someone find a solution!

This is happening to me also. I had a iphone 15 that deleted almost 4,000 messages. I went in and recovered the messages. The next day I bought an iphone 15 pro. I copied the contents from the 15 to the 15 pro and the next day they were gone again on the 15 pro. I recovered them from deleted again. Today they have deleted themselves again. Like others each time it says I have fewer days to recover.

for what it's worth. My problem seems to have been corrected. When it started I had about 100 messages deleted. When I recovered it went back to 2021 for a total of over 1600 messages . This went back and forth ( deleting / recovering). It has restored itself to the original messages that I had when this all started (100). I also updated my phone from a 12 to a 15. Initially the 15 had the same problem. Hopefully yours will recover as well.

I am having the same issue. I have a long thread with 19,000 messages(that might be the issue😬). I noticed the entire thread was gone. It is the only thread that is auto deleting. Assuming I deleted it by accident, I immediately restored it. I happened to look today and noticed they were all deleted again but only storing some current messages that began on the date last week when the initial deletion occurred. So I lost all but a handful of recent texts. I immediately restored them again. I feel hopeful now that I see I am not alone and hopefully Apple is working to correct the issue. Do I need to make a case with Apple?

Would love to learn any other steps I can take other than being sure that my settings are on “forever”(they were) and what resolutions anyone learns from Apple.

Thank you!

I thought I had fixed it (see my previous post) but after seeing several people posting that they still had the issue I checked the message thread that had the problem and yes the issue is still there for me too. I am missing a year of messages with this one particular person. And the deleted messages are also gone from the recently deleted list…. Running iOS 18 on iPhone 16 pro max.