Introduction
If you’ve ever accidentally deleted an important message or conversation on your iPhone or iPad, you know how frustrating that can be. Maybe it was an essential piece of information, a cherished memory, or critical details you need to reference. The good news is that Apple provides a way to recover those messages, so they’re not lost forever.
Some of the images associated with the steps are included inline below. All images associated with these steps can be seen in the embedded YouTube video. Also, please note that you’re not able to leave a comment directly on this article. If you have a question or feedback, please leave it on the YouTube video.
Steps to Find Recently Deleted Text Messages On Your iPhone or iPad
- Tap to open the Messages app on your Apple iPhone or iPad. You’ll land on the Messages screen.
- Tap “Filters” at the top of this screen. A Messages menu opens.
- Tap “Recently Deleted.” A list of recently deleted text messages from over roughly the last month is displayed. To be clear, you can’t tap to see any of these messages in this area. If you want to see the content of any deleted messages, you’ll need to tap to select that message and then tap “Recover.” That message will be restored to your Messages screen.
What Types of Text Messages Should You Delete?
1. Personal and Sensitive Information
When a text message contains personal or sensitive information about either yourself or someone else, you should delete it immediately if at all possible. Examples of this type of information could be medical or financial information. If someone else were to get their hands on this type of data they could do a lot of damage to you personally.
2. Reduce Risk of a Data Breach
While companies have gotten very good at locking down their information that employees access on their personal devices, sensitive information that gets sent about work through text messages is still a tremendous risk. To protect both yourself and the organization you work for, any sensitive information associated with your workplace that gets sent through a text message should be deleted immediately to reduce the risk of someone else getting their hands on it.
3. Free Up Storage Capacity and De-cluttering
The most obvious reason to delete your text messages is to free up storage space. While hanging on to old text messages gives you a great archive of data to tap into, over time it will eat away in a meaningful fashion at your storage space, which can be precious. At a minimum, you should delete old conversation threads you have a high level of confidence you won’t ever need to refer to.
