Is it possible to recover deleted text messages from around a year ago?

Unless you have an iPhone backup from that period stored somewhere, no.

(I know this is a somewhat old thread, but someone may stumble on it if they're in a similar situation!)

It really all depends, unfortunately. When the messages are deleted, the database storing them marks it as "deleted" but doesn't actually destroy the information fully. Eventually the database will recompact the space, rearrange, and reuse, but until then the message could be found.

With that said, from my own experience, sometimes the much older messages are the ones that happen to stick around, and the newer ones get overwritten first. It all just depends on how the space in the file gets compacted and reused 🙂 I'd say it's worth a try to look.

I am the main developer for Decipher TextMessage, which has a feature to recover deleted text messages from the iPhone backup files. The nice thing is that the software will scan for your iTunes backups of your phones (perhaps finding the message in an older backup before it was deleted!), show you all of the regular not-deleted messages, and then you can press the recover button to look for deleted information. I usually recommend running the program once to see what older information you have (always better to get the original not-deleted version when possible) and then make a new backup and run Decipher TextMessage again.

I hope this helps someone out! If you want to send us some more questions directly, you can do so from our website http://deciphertools.com

(Disclaimer: Clearly since I work for Decipher Media, the links I have made above to deciphertools.com may benefit me in the future.)

The answer is absolutely yes if you know the methods of iPhone SMS recovery:

First, check if you have any iTunes or iCloud backups that had been created before the SMS were lost.

If there is any backup that you think may contain the lost messages, try to extract the messages from the backup file with the help of an iPhone backup extractor. In such a situation, restoring the iPhone using iTunes or iCloud is not recommended as you will lose all the data generated after the backup file is created.

If you are sure there are no backups left that may contain the lost messages, try to recover them directly from the device with the help of an iPhone data recovery software. This method works till the space that stores the lost messages has been overwritten by new data, so it’s still possible to find them back even if they were lost around a year ago.

The desired message MAY be in there, if the backup was made before you deleted the message in the phone, else it is gone forever.

Trying to decipher the contents of the raw backup using an SQL viewer is a bit daunting since it would require precise knowledge of the data structures. There are a number of applications that should make the task easier, for example iExplorer, PhoneView, iMazing, etc. Alas, none are free anymore, but they may offer a try-before-buy option.