How Can I Get Back Lost Texts?

It may not be too late to recover messages, but you must act quickly

Edward C. Baig,

AARP

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Published May 06, 2026

an illustration of text bubbles pouring out of a trash can

AARP (Getty Images)

Key takeaways

Deleted texts on Android and iPhone often linger in Trash or Recently Deleted for about 30 days, with previews unreadable until restored.
Messages may still exist if they were archived, synced to another device or captured in a backup made before deletion.
Recovery options shrink over time; older messages usually require backups, help from the sender or risky third‑party tools.

AARP members and readers are invited to submit pressing technology questions they’d like me to tackle in my Tech Guru column, including issues around devices, security, social media and how all the puzzle pieces fit together. This week, I’m combining two similar reader questions to address how to restore deleted messages.

I recently accidentally deleted all the precious texts from one person. Please tell me there’s a way to restore them. It’s just a bunch of sentimental stuff that makes me smile but is so important to me. —Debby D.

I need to recover some old text messages and photos from my Android phone. These were deleted a while ago, in some cases over a year. I do know the phone numbers associated with the texts. Any suggestions would be appreciated. —Larry S.

Debby, the optimal word in your question is “recently,” because how long it has been since you deleted the texts determines whether you can restore them.

Alas, for the same reason, Larry, I’m sorry to say your chances of retrieving texts deleted so long ago are minute. Still, there are a few things you could try, and if at least some of the texts you’d like to restore were removed lately, you may be able to get them back.

Since you mentioned Android, Larry, I’ll start there, though I’ll also explain how to recover messages on iPhones.

I’m going to assume you’ve been using Google Messages, the most prominent messaging system on Android.

Trashed or deleted messages in Google Messages don’t completely go away immediately. Instead, they land in the aptly named Trash folder, where they remain for up to 30 days before being permanently disposed of.

To access that folder, tap your profile picture in the upper-right corner of the Google Messages app and tap Trash. Next to each of the chats in that folder, which includes all the texts that made up the conversation, you’ll see how many days you have left before they’re automatically removed for good.

You cannot read messages while they’re in Trash, so you will have to resurrect them first to make sure they’re the ones you want to hang on to.

Recovering a trashed message

Tap the chat you want to recover in Trash, and tap the tiny clock icon in the upper-right corner of the screen. Texts are whisked back to the regular Google Messages inbox, provided you are within the 30-day time frame.

Archived instead? Your old messages may have been archived rather than deleted, though I suspect you’d already know if that was the case since you would have had to tap Archive rather than Trash in the first place.

Ask the Tech Guru

Archived texts are not subject to the same 30-day limit as trashed ones. They land in their own dedicated Archived folder in Google Messages, where they can remain indefinitely. You access the Archive folder the same way as the Trash folder. Tap your profile picture to get started.

Unlike the Trash folder, you can read messages within the Archived folder before choosing whether to move them back to the main inbox. To do so, tap the message you want to move | the three dots in the upper-right corner of the screen | Unarchive.

Deleted iPhone messages have similar retention limits

iPhone users who delete messages and their attachments from the Messages app can also recover them within 30 days. Those messages are dispatched to a Recently Deleted folder, the Apple equivalent of Google Messages’ Trash folder. Tap the three horizontal lines in the upper-right corner of the Messages app to access that folder. Each conversation in the folder shows how many days remain before deletion. Though 30 days is supposed to be the limit before messages are permanently deleted, some may linger up to 40 days, Apple says. As with Google Messages’ Trash folder, you won’t be able to read the messages within the Recently Deleted folder.

To restore a Recently Deleted message, press and hold your finger against any message, then tap Recover. Texts are returned to the main Messages inbox. Or tap multiple messages on the list to fill in their respective circles, then tap Recover at the bottom left corner of the screen. If all the messages in the Recently Deleted folder are candidates to return, tap Recover All instead.

Unlike Google, Apple does not have a dedicated archive folder. If you do nothing, texts will remain in the Messages app, unless you set up automatic deletion in Settings. Apple lets you keep messages for 30 days, one year or “forever.”

What about recovering those really old texts?

As I mentioned, the prospects of getting back long-discarded messages aren’t great. Depending on how the messages were sent, they may have been encrypted or rendered unreadable, making recovery near impossible.

Moreover, texts that were “permanently” erased may have been overwritten after a certain period of time to free up space for new data. Consider them gone for good as well.

Here are some long-shot paths to consider:

Contact the sender. If possible, get in touch with the person you sent the texts to and who responded in kind. You may no longer have those texts, but perhaps that person does and can resend them.

It may depend on the nature of the content. If the exchanges were controversial or even acrimonious, the person you reach out to may be unwilling to cooperate.

If you were on good terms but lost touch, this might be a good excuse to reach out. If the person you’d been communicating with is now deceased, any texts between you two are likely permanently lost as well, unless you have access to the person’s old phone and password.

Check other devices. Along those lines, maybe you have, say, your late spouse’s device, or other handsets, tablets or computers that possibly have the texts. Is there a device in a drawer you’ve forgotten about?

Did you take a screenshot? If a text exchange back in the day was extremely memorable, perhaps you took a screenshot that you’ve also since forgotten. Search your photo library if this is even a remote possibility.

Check your backups. Again, this is unlikely to work if you’re searching for texts from way back, but you may be able to recover messages if your most recent backup in the cloud and/or on an external physical drive was created before the messages were deleted. You may have texts backed up via Google Drive, Samsung Cloud or Apple’s iCloud.

If you’ve got automatic backups going and synced through the cloud with other devices, the rub is that when texts were deleted from your phone, they could have been deleted from those other devices and your backup as well.

What’s more, while you may be able to restore an ancient backup, the process likely means reverting your phone to factory settings and then reinstalling that old backup. Thus, anything you’ve done after that original backup was created will be lost.

Contact your service provider. Consider this another Hail Mary. Carriers may have logs or metadata of older communications, but rarely the content of the messages themselves, and certainly not anything that was encrypted. In the unlikely event that they do have the messages, you’ll have to provide account details, proper identification, and ample personal and legal justification for why you have the right to view those messages.

Use data-recovery software. Third-party data-recovery tools and digital forensics may be able to resurrect old texts if you’re lucky, but reviews are often mixed, and the process can be both tricky and costly. Plus, there’s no guarantee of success. Search the app stores and read user reviews before taking this path.

Bonus tip: Samsung is about to retire its Messages app

Come July, Samsung will discontinue the Samsung Messages app that resides on some of its Galaxy phones, at least for users in the U.S. The company is instead pushing folks to Google Messages, which is already preloaded on many Galaxies and available otherwise as a free download in the Google Play Store.

Google Messages is much more robust than Samsung Messages and includes AI-powered scam detection and support for the RCS messaging platform, which, among other features, provides real-time typing indicators and enhanced group chat capabilities.

After making the switch, messages and conversations are supposed to be automatically transferred from Samsung Messages to Google Messages, a process that may take some time. It’s not a bad idea to double-check that the messages you want to preserve indeed move over before Samsung deactivates its legacy messaging system.

Find more details on making the switch at the Samsung website.                               

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The key takeaways were created with the assistance of generative AI. An AARP editor reviewed and refined the content for accuracy and clarity. 

Edward C. Baig covers technology and other consumer topics. He previously worked for USA Today, BusinessWeek, U.S. News & World Report and Fortune. He is the author of Macs for Dummies and coauthor of iPhone for Dummies and iPad for Dummies. Follow him on LinkedIn, Threads and X (formerly known as Twitter).                   