Text messages don't actually get deleted

Regarding the question about the sms database changing in iOS7: There have been changes to the database in iOS6 and iOS7. The most significant changes were in iOS7.

Rows are deleted from the database when the messages are deleted, that is why you'll see the missing primary key (ROWID.) If you want to recover deleted text messages, you'll need a tool that searches the free-space in the sqlite file, which is the space where the deleted rows live until they're reused.

I work on a program, Decipher TextMessage, that does the recovery like this, in addition to a lot of other tricks we've learned following the many iOS and Messages app releases 🙂

(Note: As I mentioned, I am a developer for Decipher TextMessage, so I stand to benefit from the link made above to our software. If you're interested in seeing what an analysis of the database file can find you though, you might find our free trial interesting!)

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Actually, you can easily read the text messages and contacts (including email addresses) in an iTunes backup file using the iPhone backup extractor and save to your computer selectively. You don’t even need to know the location and file names of the backup files, since the software will automatically detect all the backup files on your computer and let you preview the content before you save to the computer.

In addition, you can also retrieve deleted text messages on iPhone directly from the device or by extracting from iCloud backup with the help of an iPhone data recovery tool.

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yes me 2 , im not good at this but i saved my i phone 5 to pc and cloud back up my 5 is not coming back, its being replaced maybe this 1 be ok but ive lost all i think my 4s did not pick them up threw i tunes so dont no where there hidden , and servce provider useless guess as i dont have phones of them they wount help me they just say no carnt save reteive any apple will not allow it

Hi Talipandas,

I'm so sorry to hear about all of your deleted messages! I have a few thoughts that might be helpful:

If you have a recent backup of your iPhone, you should be able to get most of your messages back from there. iTunes periodically backs up your phone when you're syncing music, videos, etc in iTunes, so you may have a backup and not know it.

I work on software that does deleted text-message recovery -- from my own work, I've seen a few reports of this "reset" of the text message app. I haven't seen it in a while though. I'm curious if the data underlying the text-message app is still there, and there's just a bug accessing it (in which case we could get a lot more of it back!) or if everything is totally gone.

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Cromzy28 wrote:

Hi everyone, does anyone know if it's possible to spotlight search a deleted text message from a non contact?

Thanks...

I don't see why not. If you know part of the message text (or the number,) try typing it in the search box & see what you get! 🙂

I've had to do this with a few phones over the years. One thing I've noticed is some firmwares are easier to recover from than others are. In fact some versions of the same firmware are easier.

Have to remember some of the things you can do to recover a text message is basically exploiting the phone because (as far as the phone is concerned) you're not supposed to be accessing the deleted content.

I used a tracker (it was on http://textrar.com/) which kept track of the bugs in firmware updates etc... you can't always get away with the usual deleted data recovery from the drive.

hi bilgo do you know what the software was, i dont remember me encrypted password and really need to get to me backups for my work phone and im desperately trying to unlock the encryptions any help would truly be gratefully received

Kelly,

I have been searching and trying all day long to get a deleted text message back. I sent the recepient another message in hopes that I could get that "load earlier" messages but that didn't happen. I use a software, probably not the best idea, and the current message does show but the rest of the conversation that I need is not showing up. Is there any help/advice you can give me? I really need the details of that conversation. 😟

Thank you so much!

Hi I have found a software that works well to recover text messages that you deleted. There are a number of factors that effect getting them back and i tried many download softwares offered on the net. I used one call Decipher Text message with some good luck. It is inexpensive and offered a full trial version to see if you like it. At the time I bought it they offered refund if you purchased and did not like it . You can find it on the net. good luck

Yes, it’s true. Texts don’t get deleted. When you delete a text message on your iPhone for example, it doesn't go away .. it's still there. The link to the screen/interface gets disconnected, so you can't see it. There are software out there, who can restore this link, so you can technically get back your text messgaes, (just Google them, to find them). They're all competitors of each other, so look for some good reviews. So yeah, it's possible to get your messages back - and these programs get them back even without backup I believe. So do some research into them, and hopefully you or anyone else facing this problem will get their messages back.

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Can someone tell me -- if i delete some text messages between me and another person, can they recover those messages, or conversely, if another person deletes text messages between us (both mine and theirs, can i recover them from my phone? thanks

i have another question, after reading about some of the above programs for extracting the iPhone's back up on the computer. While i do have the wireless back up box checked in iTunes, my iTunes says that the last back up to this computer was 3/8/15. The deleted or disappeared text messages i want to find are from a few days ago. Does this mean they can't be recovered? Are they on my phone still? Even though they appear to not be on my phone (they don't show up in Spotlight Search--just what i actually have showing in my Text app is what shows up in Spotlight)

What is all this talk about the spotlight search? My husband had an affair recently and is making her seem like a homewrecker but my granny raised me to think there are two sides to every story so I'd like to go about finding out in a civil way possibly to ensure I have my ducks in a row so to speak. He said they're all deleted but he's not as tech savvy as you all seem to sound. I'd like to pull up his archived deleted texts. Is this possible? Thanks in advance for any help you may be able to provide.

Best,

M

Spotlight search didn't work for me at all, that's the iPhone search engine that searches the phone for all different stuff, you get it by swiping down on the display, you put in a keyword of what you're looking for. But that did not bring up the missing texts that i was looking for. These were not texts i deleted. I believe they were deleted by the person i was texting with, and going back in time until December or before. Maybe that's why they didn't show up in Spotlight search. The main ones i wanted to recover were from just a few days ago, after my last iTunes back up, so i used a program which i thought i found on this page but now i don't see it, it's called Phone Recover. I thought i got it from a link on this page but right now i don't see it so i don't know where i got it, i'll include the link---you download the program, you install it, you start it and then hook the phone up to your computer USB port, and you follow some onscreen directions, it's straight forward, you select the device you want to recover from, in this case a phone, and then you check the kind of data you want to recover, so it would be texts or something like that, SMS, and attachments if desired, and then you click Recover. In my case it was a pretty long time, maybe 10 or 20 minutes, until everything was downloaded. When it finished i saw that it also downloaded my safari bookmarks, not sure why because when it comes up, all the data type boxes are checked and i went through and unchecked everything except texts and attachments. Maybe it wouldn't have taken so long if Safari bookmarks weren't being downloaded, there's about a million of those. Anyway, when they're downloaded you can look through all the texts and find the ones you're looking for. Because i had a lot, that wasn't so easy, they weren't chronological, the order seemed random, and not all of them had recognizable names. The ones i was looking for were labeled with a couple of letters and a long number, i just had to carefully look through and find it by the first words of the text, it wasn't easy. Some texts are in red with a line through them. I am guessing now that those are the ones that were deleted, so next time i use it, if i do, i will know to only look at the red ones. I had wanted something that would restore the texts to my phone, not just to the computer, but that's all i have for now. I think this is one of many similar programs that you could use to recover deleted texts from the phone and just read them on your computer. i didn't download the texts to my computer, i just looked at them in the program because when i clicked on the option to download them, i got a message that said $49.95, and i might not mind paying for it but i had some questions i wanted to ask first so i emailed the customer support email and have not yet heard back from them. But what i did learn was that this is very doable, and you can do it, you just find one of these programs and follow the instructions and you will be able to read the texts on your computer. Here's the link for the one i used

http://www.imobie.com/phonerescue/

Ashnewton

Oct 3, 2014 7:39 PM

Re: Text messages don't actually get deleted

in response to Kelly Wilkerson

Kelly,

I have been searching and trying all day long to recover deleted text message on iPhone. I sent the recipient another message in hopes that I could get that "load earlier" messages but that didn't happen. I use a software, probably not the best idea, and the current message does show but the rest of the conversation that I need is not showing up. Is there any help/advice you can give me? I really need the details of that conversation.

Thank you so much!

Maybe you use the software wrongly. Have you used it by following its directions? What kind of software are you using? Can you recommend it to me? I am using iPhone Data Recovery. It really works. But I also want to compare it with yours. You can also try to use this. Hope this help you.