How to Recover Deleted iMessages on iPhone, iPad and Mac

This article will show you how to Recover Deleted iMessages on iPhone, iPad and Mac. You have a lot of choices when it comes to instant messaging apps for your different platforms. But if you use an Apple product, you are probably more likely to use iMessage. iMessage is Apple’s own texting system, and you can use it on the iPhone, iPad, and even the Mac. If you want to know more information about this Visit Official Apple Support site.

Like with any other messaging app, there’s a chance that you’ll delete iMessages on your devices by mistake. When this happens, your messages disappear from your chats right away, and it looks like there were no messages there at all. So, stop kicking yourself for making a mistake and read this guide to learn the best ways to get back lost text messages on an iPhone, iPad, or Mac.

How to Recover Deleted iMessages on iPhone, iPad

Use iCloud

If your iPhone is set up to back up to iCloud, you might be able to use a recent backup to get back lost text messages. This will put your iPhone back to the way it was when you made the backup. This can help you get the text message back, but you might lose some other information.

1. Open the Settings app and tap your name at the top.
2. Select iCloud, and make sure that Messages are turned on in the list of apps.
3. Tap iCloud Backup. Check that your iPhone has been backed up recently.
4. Go back to the main Settings app menu and select General, then scroll down and select either Reset or Transfer or Reset iPhone, depending on what iOS version you have.
5. Tap Erase All Content and Settings, then confirm that it’s what you want to do. You’ll likely have to provide your iCloud password to turn off Find My.
6. Your iPhone will take a few minutes to reset to factory conditions. After that, you’ll be greeted with the iPhone’s initial welcome screen. Go through the first few steps, and on the Apps & Data screen, choose Restore from iCloud Backup.
7. Sign into iCloud to access your backups, then choose the last backup before you deleted the text messages you want to recover.

Try iTunes or Finder

If you backed up your iPhone to a Mac or PC instead of iCloud, you can try recovering your iPhone from that backup instead. This means that you need to use iTunes on Windows or Finder on a Mac. To get back iPhone texts that were deleted with iTunes or Finder:

1. Connect your iPhone to your computer and open iTunes or Finder, if they don’t pop up automatically.
2. In iTunes, click on the phone icon at the top of the screen and choose Summary from the menu on the left. In Finder, click your phone’s name under Locations.
3. Click Restore Backup and your old texts will hopefully reappear on your phone. If they don’t, your backup didn’t include these texts.

How to Recover Deleted iMessages on Mac

Using Time Machine 

Follow these steps to easily get back deleted texts from a Time Machine backup as long as you regularly back up your Mac with Time Machine:

• Sign out all iMessage accounts and quit Messages.
• Press and hold down the Option key and select “Go > Library” from the Finder menu bar.
• Locate the Library section and click on Messages.
• When the messages folder comes up, locate a file with the “chat.db” name and a date before the date the files you are looking for were deleted. 
• Select the file and click “Restore“.

Using iCloud

iCloud is another way to see texts on a Mac that have been deleted. Follow the steps below to search your MacBook for lost iMessages.

• Sign out of iMessage on your Mac and quit the app.
• Open the Finder.
• Select Go from the Finder menu.
• Locate your library.
• Find a file named [messages] from an iCloud backup.
• Open this messages folder.
• Click “Restore“.

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