You Can Restore Deleted iPhone Text Messages With a Few Taps – Here's How

If you've ever deleted an important message or conversation in the Messages app on your iPhone -- whether from frustration, spring cleaning or by accident -- you're probably wondering how you can get it back. 

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Prior to iOS 16, you'd actually need to restore your iPhone from a backup to retrieve the message. Thankfully, this isn't the case anymore, and you can restore deleted messages right within the Messages app. There's a catch, though. 

Below, we'll show you how to restore recently deleted messages with a couple of taps. 

Locate your deleted text messages

All your deleted text messages can be found in the Messages app. To find your trashed messages, open Messages and tap the Edit option at the top left. Then tap Show Recently Deleted. 

A list of your recent text messages will appear, showing phone numbers or contacts, number of messages and days left until permanent deletion. This will include both entire message threads and individual texts that are deleted. However, you'll be able to see (and recover) deleted messages only if they've been deleted in the last 30 days, so you have to act relatively fast.

Also, you can't see the actual messages themselves, so you'll have to recover them by recognizing the contact name or phone number. Once they're recovered, you'll be able to read the texts.

The Recently Deleted section in Messages will show all messages you've deleted within the past 30 days. Blake Stimac/CNET© Provided by CNET

Recover the messages you want to restore

If you want to recover a text message, tap on the thread or message so that it's selected, hit Recover on the bottom right, and then tap Recover Message in the pop-up that appears. You can also recover all of your deleted text messages at once -- don't select any message and then just tap Recover All.