Everybody has been there. You may lose a text thread you intended to save with only one incorrect press. Here’s the good news, however. The iPhone communications app makes it shockingly simple to inadvertently erase communications. That does not imply their permanent disappearance. There is an easy method to recover deleted messages before they are permanently lost if you act fast.

Prior to iOS 16, retrieving the message required restoring your iPhone from a backup. This is no longer the case, as the texts app now allows you to recover deleted texts. But there’s a catch.

Here, we’ll demonstrate how to use a few taps to recover previously erased texts.

See the iPhone settings you should adjust for a better night’s sleep and all the new Messages features that make iOS 18 so amazing for additional information.

Messages Recently Deleted

All of the messages you have erased in the last 30 days are shown in the Messages section under “Recently Deleted.”
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.
Nelson Aguilar/CNET screenshots
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.