You could sometimes wish to restore an earlier text, regardless of whether you delete it after reading it or save it for future generations. Leaving whole conversations on your phone for weeks, months, or even years is not unheard of. Regretfully, the Messages software makes it quite simple to erase a whole chat. You may quickly lose everything with a single swipe and a careless touch. However, you may regain them all if you take quick action. All you have to do is know what to do.
See also: iPhone 16: What We Know About the Date of Release, Leaks, and Other Details
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To get the message back before iOS 16, you would really have to restore your iPhone from a backup. Fortunately, this is no longer the case, as the texts app now allows you to recover lost texts. But there’s a catch.
Here, we’ll demonstrate how to use a few taps to recover previously erased texts.
For more, see all the new Messages features coming with iOS 18 this fall, as well as the iPhone settings you should adjust for a better night’s sleep.
Find the text texts you erased.
Messages Recently Deleted
All of the messages you have erased in the last 30 days are shown in the Messages section under “Recently Deleted.”
CNET/Blake Stimac
The Messages app contains all of your deleted text messages. Tap the Edit button in the upper left corner of texts to see your destroyed texts. Next, choose “Show Recently Deleted.”
A list of your most recent texts will display the amount of messages, contacts or phone numbers, and days before they are permanently erased. This will cover both deleted individual messages and whole communication threads. However, you must move very quickly since you will only be able to see (and retrieve) deleted communications that have been erased within the past 30 days.
Additionally, the messages themselves are hidden, so you will need to identify the phone number or contact name in order to retrieve them. You will be able to read the texts when they are retrieved.
Retrieve the messages that you want to recover.
To recover a text message, pick the thread or message by tapping on it, then click Recover from the bottom right, and then select Recover Message from the pop-up that displays. Additionally, you may retrieve all of your lost text messages at once by tapping retrieve All without selecting individual texts.
iOS deleted SMS messages
Additionally, all deleted text messages may be recovered at once.
Aguilar Nelson/CNET
You may need to browse through your current texts to locate your recovered messages since they will be shown in the order that they were written or received. This is particularly true if the messages are old and your inbox is overflowing with new ones.
Read more about why you may want to opt out of Google’s Find My Device network and how to do so.