iOS 26 Restoring YEARS of deleted messages!

I did this update yesterday and sorry I did! Not only do I find the new format annoying , but it deleted many of my old messages. Compared to most others I read on here, my situation was that it deleted everything prior to 2025 with the exception of phone numbers that were numerical and did not have a contact name applied to them. All of those have a string going back to 2021. Most of them were political messages and other types of things from businesses that I never created a contact for. I no longer have certain contact messages at all since I hadn't received a message in 2025 from those individuals. I tried the other suggestions short of hooking it up to a PC. I did get some messages back but only from people who were current in 2025 no one prior to 2025 came back to my phone. Just a rant, but hoping the last messages will return miraculously someday (lol).

UpdateNeverAgain wrote:

So, the next thing I did after making the HUGE mistake of updating, was to warn everyone I could not to update their iPhone... From here... I just don't know. I've done one of my contacts -- took a long time. My phone is an old 7 SE but was perfect for me --an easy-going-don't-worry-be-happy retired senior citizen! Now, I'm thinking I'm going to have to invest in another phone-- which will take me months to get used to -- because other issues are now showing up, like double screens, stuck screens, stuck alarms... sigh... WHY???...APPLE...WHY???

Why??? Why??? Why are you telling us, your fellow users? Apple doesn't read here for feedback or suggestions. You can, however, let them know your thoughts here:

Product Feedback - Apple

You should always buy whatever device best meets your needs.

Hi mine did the same thing, just wondering if you had any luck restoring them.

Well, I’m sorry this happened to you and lost your deceased mother‘s messages

I'm wondering if "they" R even trying to figure something out. I guess "they" R not listening in on this forum... crickets... R all I hear

At 12:24 am today (9/22/25) ios 26 deleted all my messages with my wife, and also blocked her from finding my phone. I restored the Find function but the messages might all be gone???? This is as BAD as an update gets!

I’m in the same boat. It’s making me crazy. Im seeing “syncing to iCloud paused” in my messages, but I think when it unpauses all these old messages come back, THOUSANDS.

Also, get this, I was texting with a friend, I deleted the text thread with him. Then I re-texted him starting a new thread. He responded a few minutes later and when I went into that text, there were 1400 additional text from him that started back in May and went way back. That happened in a matter of about five minutes. So there were two texts from today and the third text back was from May and then went waaay back!!

Do you think stopping iCloud message backups would stop this?

Changed my message history back to 30 days in message setting did the trick. Gave it a few seconds. iOS upgrade changes than setting to forever. Which could have been those messages flagged as forever back years ago. I would still say this is a bug because current settings should apply to even old messages.

I am more concerned that messages I deleted a year or more ago are still hanging out in the cloud and can be restored. Did the definition of delete change in our newly minted AI world.

it took 2 days for "Text Message Forwarding" to show up on my iPhone 17 Pro.. now that I have that set my MacBook Air is getting and sending messages to Android devices.

This update has been a pain, but the kinks are slowly being worked..

After the update, tons of old messages were re-activated. I immediately noticed that the setting was changed from save for 30 days to save forever. I switched it back to save for 30 days, thinking that it would do that only to the deleted texts. Boy was I wrong. I had my husband’s and my entire history of texts, going back to our beginning flirtatious texts 10 years ago deleted in instant. I cried. What a mess.

ios 26 changes deleted message filtering to 'save forever'. If you switch it back to 30 days or one year, it will delete everything older than that, INCLUDING in open/active conversations. Beware! I lost 10 years worth of texts with my husband (including sentimental early flirtatious texts) in an instant. 😳🥺

A challenge with this for me so far is that those reappeared text threads will reappear repeatedly after I delete them and then delete them from "recently deleted." So it's a never-ending process of deleting the same texts from several years ago over and over.