Question: How to Recover Deleted Text Messages on iPhone 14?
I always delete texts from my iPhone 14 Pro Max daily. Now I need some texts conversations from December of last year to February of this year for a legal matter. How can I go about this?
Answer:
Don’t worry! There are actually multiple solutions for retrieving deleted text messages from iPhone 14 to choose from.
- Find deleted texts on iPhone 14 from Recently Deleted folder. If the SMS are deleted from iPhone 14 within the last 30 to 40 days, you can get back the deleted iPhone text messages by going to Edit or Filters > Show Recently Deleted or Recently Deleted, selecting texts that you want to recover, and tapping Recover or Recover Message or Recover [Number] Messages in the Messages app of your iPhone 14.
- Check if you have any up-to-date iPhone backup created with iTunes or Finder on computer or with iCloud. If you can find the backup files, and they are up-to-date, restore from the backup files. Please note that if you use this method to perform iPhone message recovery, you should ensure the backup is up-to-date, or else, you may lose the data generated after the backup.
- If a computer backup (created in iTunes on a Mac with macOS Mojave or earlier, or on a PC, or in Finder on a Mac with macOS Catalina or later) of the iPhone 14 is found, however the backup is not up-to-date, you are not 100% sure whether the deleted texts are included or you don’t want to lose the data created since the backup, you are suggested trying to extract the deleted text messages from the backup using an iPhone backup extractor instead of restoring from it. Generally, an iPhone data recovery software allows you to browse the content in a backup in detail by categories, and you can selectively recover one message, one conversation, multiple messages, multiple conversations, all the messages, even all the content in the backup. With method 2, you have to restore the iPhone 14 with a whole backup, however, in this method, you can partially and selectively recover deleted text messages as you want.
- If no backup of the iPhone 14 is found, or the deleted text messages are not contained in the backups, you can still retrieve deleted text messages from iPhone 14 directly by scanning the internal storage using a free iPhone data recovery. Download and install a free iPhone data retrieval tool such as Wondershare Dr.Fone, iSkysoft dr.fone, Syncios Data Recovery and Stellar Data Recovery for iPhone; run the tool and let it scan the storage of your iPhone 14 directly; preview the found text messages; take screenshots of the texts that you would like to would or type them up manually, which can be done for completely free. Of course, if you want to save the deleted text messages to your computer, or transfer them back to your iPhone 14, you may need to use a paid license.
- Finally, you still have other opportunities to recover deleted texts on iPhone 14 without backup: try to contact the other party of the messages, ask him or her to send the messages back to you again; turn to the technical support of your iPhone 14’s carrier, and see if they have any copy of your deleted text messages.
Notes:
This method only works for recovering texts deleted from iPhone running iOS 16 or later within the last 30 to 40 days. If you were using iOS 15 or earlier when you accidently deleted the text messages, you cannot find the texts back even if you upgrade to iOS 16. iPhone 14 came with iOS 16, so you won’t encounter such problems if you are using iPhone 14. However, even if you are using iPhone 14, you cannot recover text messages that have been deleted more than 30 to 40 days with this method. Take it easy, we do have other solutions of iPhone 14 SMS recovery.
Notes:
- Regular backup is also the best way of retrieving deleted text messages from iPhone 14. Actually, it’s rather easy to make iPhone automatically back up to iCloud.
- Try your best to stop writing new data to your iPhone 14 when you find the texts are deleted until they are successfully recovered. New data may overwrite deleted text messages and make them even more difficult to recover. It is recommended to turn on Airplane Mode once you find the texts are deleted by mistake.