How to recover deleted texts on iPhone

If you follow the instructions here all of your content (including messages) will be gone forever:

What to do before selling or giving away your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

Restore deleted tests on iPhone: from iCloud

If you have ever backed up your iPhone to iCloud or iTunes you should be able to restore your iPhone text messages from the backup. In fact unless you disabled the automatic sync option in iTunes, you should have created a backup everytime you synched with your PC or Mac. (See also: Create a group of contacts on your iPhone.)

Unfortunately, iCloud doesn't back up SMS in all territories, and for all phone operators. My UK O2-operated iPhone 5 falls into this category. So the following may not work (which is a shame because this is the best backup you can have for your SMS messages). You'll need only to go to step 2 to find out.

1. Login to https://icloud.com with your Apple ID and password
2. Click on Text Messages (if it isn't there your messages haven't been backed up).
3. If it is there searched the messages to find the ones you need.
4. Now go to your iPhone and choose Settings, iCloud on your iPhone.
5. Turn off Text Messages (or ensure it is turned off). I know this sounds counter intuitive but stay with it.
6. You'll see a pop-up. Select: 'Keep on My iPhone'.
7. Now turn back on text messages.
8. Tap 'Merge', and wait. After a few minutes the deleted text messages should appear back on your iPhone.

Restore deleted tests on iPhone: from iTunes backup

Don't worry if the above didn't work. We have two further options to try. First let's try recovering deleted SMS messages via an iTunes backup. (See also: How to send group texts from Android and iPhone.)

1. Connect your iPhone to the PC with which you sync it. iTunes should open (if not, open it manually).
2. You should see your iPhone in a box, top righthand corner. Select it.
3. Now choose 'Restore backup'.
4. All the data you previously backed up will now replace the data on your phone. It will take a few minutes. As long as you haven't backed up subsequent to deleting those text messages, they should now appear on your phone handset.

Restore from iCloud

If you have ever backed up your iPhone to iCloud or iTunes you should be able to restore your iPhone text messages from the backup.

Unfortunately, iCloud doesn't back up SMS in all territories, and for all phone operators. My iPhone on O2 falls into this category. So the following may not work. You'll need only to go to step 2 to find out.

Login to https://icloud.com with your Apple ID and password
2. Click on Text Messages (if it isn't there your messages haven't been backed up).
3. If it is there searched the messages to find the ones you need.
4. Now go to your iPhone and choose Settings, iCloud on your iPhone.
5. Turn off Text Messages (or ensure it is turned off). I know this sounds counter intuitive but stay with it.
6. You'll see a pop-up. Select: 'Keep on My iPhone'.
7. Now turn back on text messages.
8. Tap 'Merge', and wait. After a few minutes the deleted text messages should appear back on your iPhone.

Restore from iTunes

Unless you disabled the automatic sync option in iTunes, you should have created a backup everytime you synched with your PC or Mac.

1. Connect your iPhone to the PC with which you sync it. iTunes should open (if not, open it manually).
2. You should see your iPhone appear. Select it.
3. Now choose 'Restore backup'.
4. All the data you previously backed up will now replace the data on your phone. It will take a few minutes. As long as you haven't backed up subsequent to deleting those text messages, they should now appear on your phone handset.

Recover with third-party apps

If neither of the options above has worked, it is time to go nuclear. Well, not nuclear exactly but it may cost you a couple of quid, and there is no guarantee it will work.

We've never used either of these, but a couple of third-party apps appear to have a good online reputation. Because even after you have 'deleted' messages they remain on your handset until overwritten, you should be able to recover deleted messages using these utilities (and others).

Source: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/mobile-phone/restore-deleted-text-messages-on- iphone-3625154/

Third Party iPhone Message Recovery Applications: I wanted to try to restore the one text conversation I deleted by accident without resorting to a full restoration from an earlier backup using iTunes. The simple reason was that I didn't want to lose the new data that was on the phone since the most recent backup - just a few days, but this could be worse for someone who doesn't back up very often.

The third party apps that I have tried seem to be able to restore the text message conversation (some luck trying to scan the phone itself, but the one I tried actually scanned the iTunes backup). However, unless I am missing something, it is not clear that they will restore any corresponding text message attachments (like photos) automatically. For the price ($80) these should be able to do this. The recovery application does show the corresponding attachments and you can select them and save them separately. However, the applications I have tried do not restore the photo attachments back into the text message chain where they originally were embedded as far as I can tell. So it is better than nothing, but I can't understand why this is so hard to be an option to have. Plus there can be thousands of attachments, and which ones do you restore? Unless you know which ones are associated with the text message, how do you select the right ones? Even more frustrating is that the text message recovery app actually shows the thumbnails of the proper photo attachments embedded in the conversation when you preview them, but then inexplicably it doesn't seem to be an option to have them automatically be copied into the conversation.

Some requests for Apple:

1. "Undo" or "Confirm Deletion" at least: Please, why can't you undo an accidental deletion of an entire text message conversation? At the very least, there should be a warning that this is going to happen. This happened to me due to an accidental swipe of a text conversation which exposed the "delete" button, and then an accidental tap of "delete" while I was trying to hit cancel. This was entirely too easy to wipe out a bunch of data, and having no way to easily recover it intact is a bit mind boggling in this day and age.

2. Incremental backups and better backup access. I get it that they don't want people to poke around and mess it up, it should all be automatic. But you have to be careful not to inadvertently overwrite your backup the way it is now. As soon as I plug in the phone, iTunes will immediately start replacing the backup. So if there was something in the backup I wanted to recover that was not currently on the phone....bye bye data. Make sure you shut off the automatic backup feature in iTunes before you reconnect. If you overwrite the backup, not sure if the third party recovery app can help you at that point (you can still potentially recover from the phone itself, possibly). Why not have incremental backups like they do for Time Machine?

Krotu wrote:

Some requests for Apple....

Apple isn't reading here. Use the feedback page for your suggestions:

http://www.apple.com/feedback

Best of luck.

As told above, it's easily done through iCloud or iTunes but many times some users might not be able to take back messages through those methods due to various reasons. In that case text messages recovery for iPhone is still possible but they should use some software applications which are available online. Just keep in mind to search thoroughly and AVOID SCAMS which only take the money and provide a useless program.

Help!

Djay88 wrote:

Help!

With what?

How can I get deleted texts or read recent texts off my iPhone

Jmaddox76 wrote:

How can I get deleted texts or read recent texts off my iPhone

If you have a back up that contains the messages, you can restore the iPhone from that back up. Note that everything on the now on the phone will be overwritten.

Don't see it

Sterlo4500 wrote:

Don't see it

What don't you see? You appear to be replying to the original poster. Their post is over two years old.

How can i read My Text that is still sabe On mu Message from 8 Month ago i keep trying to go back But when i get to The 6 Month it backs Up to last convo We had

Hi. I've tried to recover various sms from my iPhone, but they were long gone, which is irrelevant.

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