How to recover deleted text message

Every time you read a text, do you delete it or keep it on your iPhone? Many of us leave message threads indefinitely to linger for weeks, months, or even years. But it can be extremely easy to accidentally delete text in the Messages app. A long swipe and tap is enough to lose years of messages. If this happens, don’t panic. If you act quickly, you can restore the entire text thread. You just need to know what to do.

Read more: iPhone 16: what we know about the release date, leaks and more

In versions prior to iOS 16, you had to restore your iPhone from a backup to recover messages. Fortunately, this is no longer the case and you can restore deleted messages directly from the Messages app. However, there is a catch.

Below we will show you how to restore recently deleted messages with just a few taps.

For more information, check out the iPhone settings you should change to help you sleep better, and check out all the new Messages features you’ll get in iOS 18 this fall.

Find deleted text messages

All deleted text messages can be found in the Messages app. To find messages in your trash, open Messages and tap Edit option in the upper left corner. Then tap Show recently deleted.

A list of your recent text messages will appear, including phone numbers or contacts, number of messages, and days until they are permanently deleted. This applies to both entire message threads and individual texts that will be deleted. However, you’ll only be able to see (and recover) deleted messages if they were deleted within the last 30 days, so you’ll need to act relatively quickly.

Additionally, you can’t see the messages themselves, so you’ll have to recover them by recognizing the contact’s name or phone number. Once you get them back, you will be able to read your text messages.

Recover the messages you want to restore

If you want to recover a text message, tap on the thread or message to select it, press Recover in the lower right corner, then tap Recover the message in the pop-up window. You can also recover all deleted text messages at once – don’t select any message and then just tap Get everything back.

Recovered messages will be listed in order from when they were sent or received, so you may have to scroll through your existing messages a bit to find them, especially if they’re old and you have a lot of new messages cluttering up your inbox.

For more information, read more about how to opt out of Google’s Find My Device network (and why you should do it).