Recover Deleted Text Messages on iPhone

We don’t need to tell you how easy it is to accidentally tap away and delete an important text message from your iPhone. So what do you need us for? Getting that important text message back, that’s what! You’ve probably found yourself searching for an important text message with a security key or maybe a confirmation code, we all have. How about a tracking number or even a really important password? Maybe you deleted the message but maybe you deleted the whole conversation thread, either way Disk Drill can help!
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It is a common misconception to think that your iPhone text messages are stored in some magic place such as the cloud or on your cell phone provider’s network, this is not the case. Once a text message is deleted from your phone it is truly gone. Just the tap of a finger and *poof* your important or maybe even heartfelt message is gone. There is good news — it can be recovered with Disk Drill on Mac (soon on Disk Drill Windows). You are on your way to instructions on the best way to recover deleted text messages on iPhone with Disk Drill, keep reading to learn more.

#1 Disk Drill – the iPhone data recovery solution

When begging your phone provider for a copy of your message fails, iTunes and iCloud leave you out in the rain and you have no other option, all hope is not lost. Disk Drill is here to save the day with out incredible file recovery engine which can help recover iPhone messages on the iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 7, iPhone SE, iPhone 6S Plus, iPhone 6 and many other iPhone models.
  • 1Download Disk Drill
  • 2Drag to Applications Folder
  • 3Launch the app

#2 What's next with iPhone text message recovery?

Time is of the essence. When files are deleted on your iPhone they are not actually truly deleted until the data is overwritten. The faster we act the better the chances of data recovery. The best advice we can offer is to quickly download Disk Drill on your Mac and begin a scan. We also suggest that you stop using your handset all together until data recovery is complete, this reduces the risk of data being overwritten. Acting quickly and restraining from using your iPhone until data recovery occurs will increase your chances of iPhone text messages recovery. What's next with iPhone text message recovery?

#3 Disk Drill to extract your deleted text messages

Get started by launching Disk Drill on your Mac (Windows support is coming soon), locate your iPhone and click “Recover” next to it. After a quick scan is finished you will see a list of files that can be recovered. Your texts will be among the listed files grouped into a category called “Chats”. While there is no guarantee that all your messages from the past will show up, you can find out which ones are available via the quick scan feature before going any further. Disk Drill to extract your deleted text messages

#4 What's inside a text message?

We have all wondered what is inside a text message, are you wondering about the format of your deleted text messages? When Disk Drill recovers text messages it will recover them in their original format. With some experimentation we have discovered that this is often CSV files in the case of chats from the Messages app. CSV files might sound techy but they are actually just Comma-Separated Values, a very common format you can read in any text editor, or Excel, or Numbers.
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Once you see your text messages in Disk Drill, highlight them one by one and hit "Preview" to ensure the ones you are looking for are actually there. CSV files can easily be previewed in QuickLook. The deleted text message might not look the same as on your phone, but for the time being, the data inside a message is far more important. Do the preview, mark the needed items for recovery, and proceed. What's inside a text message?

Protect Your Digital Future

Disk Drill features a powerful feature called Recovery Vault which is capable of protecting your data and increasing your chances of data recovery on your Desktop or Laptop. We suggest using Disk Drill’s powerful Recovery Vault on your personal computers to help recover from data loss. With Recovery Vault enabled Disk Drill will store information about deleted files and their metadata making file recovery much faster (sometimes seconds) and much more successful. Read more about our Recovery Vault and Guaranteed Recovery Technology.

#5 Time to recover deleted text messages

You could restore an older backup and risk overwriting all of your data just to discover that the backup did not contain the text messages you want to recover but that does not sound very fun. Instead we will be using Disk Drill for iPhone text message recovery. Using Disk Drill’s powerful recovery tools it is possible to recover just the data you need without affecting your existing data.
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Now that you have run a quick iPhone/iTunes/iCloud scan you should be able to see the text messages you wish to recover on your screen. Select the deleted iPhone text messages you wish to restore and click “Recover”. In just a few seconds the restored iPhone text messages will be copied into files. You can now use the QuickLook feature, Numbers or Excel to extract data from the CSV files. These files store data in plain text which means you can open and read them with any text editor. While this won’t put the deleted text messages onto your iPhone it will let you get the scoop on your deleted text messages and read their contents. This is the best way to recover data from your deleted iPhone text messages and is much better than total data loss! Time to recover deleted text messages

Frequently Asked Questions

Updated on by Disk Drill Team

Yes. Deleted text messages can be recovered from an iPhone. This is due to the way that iOS handles the deletion. It does not physically remove the file but only marks its storage as available to the system. This allows the message to be recovered until the time it is overwritten.

Yes. Deleted texts are stored on your iPhone. The deleted text messages may remain on your device for a considerable amount of time if they are not overwritten by the system. To fully and permanently delete all of the text messages you should consider performing a reset on your iPhone.

You can control how long messages remain active on your iPhone, though we have seen that deleted messages can still reside on the device. In your iPhone’s Settings, navigate to Messages > Message History and choose between keeping them for 30 days, one year or forever. The default is forever.

To recover deleted iMessages:

  1. Download, install and install Disk Drill.
  2. Connect your iPhone to your computer and select it as the disk to be scanned.
  3. Click Recover to search for deleted data.
  4. Select the messages to be recovered and click Recover again.

To recover deleted text messages on your iPhone for free:

  1. Recover your messages by performing an iCloud recovery.
  2. Restore your data by connecting to your computer and using an iTunes backup.
  3. Contact your service provider who may have copies available for a limited time.

There are many iPhone data recovery applications that offer their users free trials during which they can test the app. The best are:

  1. Disk Drill Data Recovery Software;
  2. Stellar Data Recovery for iPhone;
  3. Wondershare Dr. Fone;
  4. EaseUS MobiSaver;
  5. Tenorshare iPhone Data Recovery.

Scan iPhone. Recover iPhone Messages.

Disk Drill for Mac implements several advanced scanning algorithms. While Deep Scan is not one of the utilized algorithms Disk Drill is still capable of helping with many data recovery scenarios on iPhone. It’s a huge relief to know that Disk Drill does provide you with multiple data recovery methods to help get back those hard to recover files. Windows OS support for iPhone data recovery is coming soon.
Multiple recovery methods

Recover deleted files on Apple computer!

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