How To Recover Deleted Text Messages On Android

We’ve all been there before. The agonizing moment when you delete a text message and soon realize that you really need it.

When it disappears, how to get it back? Where to start checking if your Android phone doesn’t have a recycle bin?

This guide will show you how to recover deleted text messages on your Android phone and what to do to prevent it from happening again.

Recover deleted text messages from Android phone

However, before you start to panic, there are ways to get your messages back to your phone. Unlike recovering deleted text messages on iPhone, it can be nearly impossible to recover them on Android.

In many cases, deleting a deleted message – SMS or MMS – does not completely delete it from your phone system, at least not immediately.

Your phone marks it as an inactive file, making it invisible and replaceable so that other new files that appear immediately after you delete a text message overwrite or replace it. It’s like writing something on paper, then erasing it, and writing something else instead.

This means that as soon as you find you have deleted a text message and want to get it back, stop using your phone to increase your chances of recovering it. Otherwise, after a while, it will probably be completely destroyed.

As mentioned, it is almost impossible to recover text messages deleted from an Android device due to the way the system manages the text data.

Unlike your computer, which has a trash can or trash bin that keeps all deleted files for some time before deleting them, your Android device doesn’t have them and you also can’t undo the deletion to recover deleted texts after confirming the action

Is it possible to recover deleted texts?

There is no guarantee that you will get your text messages back because the data may already have been deleted. It is also not easy to try to recover them from where they were placed for deletion, because you will not be able to use normal means to get to them.

Just like deleted files hidden on your computer’s hard drive pending recovery or replacement, your Android device does the same; keep whatever you delete, including text messages, long enough before space is needed to store additional data.

After deleting a message, your Android device changes the occupied space to “unused” and overwrites the deleted messages only when new data is created as you continue to use the device.

There is no specified length or time period after which deleted messages will be overwritten. The best you can do is immediately turn off the cellular or Wi-Fi on your phone or tablet and not use them to create new data. This includes taking new photos, creating new files, etc.

Your best bet is to put your device into airplane mode and quickly find an SMS recovery app that can help you recover deleted messages on Android before they are overwritten.

Recover deleted text messages on Android

Once you realize you’ve deleted important text, put your device into airplane mode. Make sure you are not recording audio, using a camera, or trying to create any new data that might overwrite your text messages.

Ask the sender / recipient

This is the first inexpensive method you can use right after you find you have deleted an important text message. If the person still has a message on his or her phone, request a screenshot or have them forward it to you. If not, try other possible solutions.

Use SMS Recovery App

This is not a reliable method as it may not work for many people. There are many sites offering recovery software for Android devices, but they have serious drawbacks. Some of these recovery apps require you to pay to recover your texts, even if they offer a free trial. Ultimately, you can pay a higher price just to recover a text message if the app developer is trustworthy and the app actually works.

Likewise, the SMS recovery app might require root access to your devices. This is a risky process as it gives you access to any file on your device. By default, the folder with your texts is hidden from you in the protected system folder on Android. This means that you cannot navigate to this folder without rooting, even if you install a regular file viewer application.

Without rooting the device, text recovery apps may not work. Instead, you may be left with a blank screen or your phone may display a security warning if you give these applications root access to your device.

In addition, you may find software that asks you to use the USB Mass Storage protocol for recovery, which is not available.

Clean and restore your phone

This will only work if you have completely backed up your Android device before deleting text messages. If you haven’t backed up your texts, you can start doing this by logging into your Google Drive account, going to Settings> Google Backup, and then choosing SMS Messages from the new menu.

If you already have Google Drive installed on your device, it probably already backs up your texts. However, you need to recover the deleted text immediately because Google Drive updates its backup every 12-24 hours.

The problem with using Google Drive to recover deleted text messages is that it is an archive, so it will immediately update the entire text history to the previous settings. It is not possible to recover only single text.

Protect your texts

Whether you have backed up your data or not, recovering deleted messages is not that difficult thanks to data recovery software. We hope that now you know what to do if you deleted text by mistake or your phone is damaged.

The above tips should cover you well, but in the future, make sure you take screenshots, keep backups in the cloud, or in your Google Drive account to keep your posts for moments like this.

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