Life is along with accidents. Things can happen when you accidentally delete important text messages because of a wrong tap or find all your messages lost after a system crash, Android update, rooting, etc.
Luckily, that’s not the end of the earth. The good news is, you can still recover deleted text messages on Android devices so long as new data do not overwrite them. And this post will answer all the questions you may have about how to retrieve deleted text messages on Android.
You May Ask: Can I Retrieve Deleted Text Messages on Android?
The answer is YES.
Although there is no recycle bin on Android phone (except for some phone models like Samsung, check 4 Easy Ways to Retrieve Deleted Text Messages on Samsung), nor is there an undo button to undelete text messages on Android, you can still recover deleted text messages on Android. Before you start, you should know:
Where are Deleted Text Messages Stored on Android?
After you delete a text message from your Android phone, the phone doesn't immediately delete the message from its memory space. Instead, it changes the space the deleted messages occupied as "unused". When you continue to use the phone and create new data, the new data will overwrite the deleted messages and occupy the space. This gives you a chance to retrieve deleted messages on Android before they are overwritten.
How Long Can Deleted Texts Remain Before Being Overwritten?
It depends on how much free storage your Android has, how many operations you do after you delete the data, and even how new your Android system is. However, it is always for sure that the sooner you take action, the greater chance the deleted messages can be recovered. Once you know that some important text messages are deleted, you should:
- Put your Android phone in Airplane Mode. By turning off the network connection on your phone, it prevents the deleted messages from being overwritten by new messages, phone calls, or other data.
- Avoid creating new files on your Android phone. For example, try not to use it to take new photos, download a new file, etc.
How to Find Deleted Messages on Android?
The deleted messages are hidden in the phone storage. There is no normal way that enables you to access the folder that contains the deleted messages, even with the best file manager app. Only by using SMS recovery software can you access the deleted Android messages. Read on to explore.
How to Retrieve Deleted Text Messages on Android with SMS Recovery Software🔥🔥
As mentioned above, although permanently deleted messages can be recovered on Android, it’s hard to do it by ourselves. FonePaw Android Data Recovery is a PC-based application that can find deleted, old text messages from Android phone memory and get them back. It is very easy to use: all you need is to connect your phone to a computer and follow the on-screen instructions of the program to restore the deleted text messages that you need.
Free Download Buy with 20% off Free Download Buy with 20% off
- Easily recover deleted Android SMS and MMS on Android phones.
- Provide a preview of the deleted text messages on your phone.
- Recover WhatsApp messages, photos, call logs, contacts, etc. on Android.
- Retrieve deleted text messages from Android SD card and even SIM card.
- Supports retrieving Android files from Samsung, Sony, Google Pixel, ASUS, Huawei, Xiaomi, Motorola, etc., covering most Android brands.
You can click here to see the in-depth review of this program. Also, follow the steps below to recover deleted text messages from Android phones.
🎬 Video Tutorial: How to Recover Deleted Text Messages on Android
STEP 1. Download and Install FonePaw Android Data Recovery
Click the download button below to free download and install the professional SMS Recovery Software FonePaw Android Data Recovery on your Windows PC/Mac.
Free Download Buy with 20% off Free Download Buy with 20% off
STEP 2. Launch the Program and Connect Android Phone to Computer
Launch Android Data Recovery on your computer. Connect your Android device to the computer with a USB cable. The program will immediately detect your Android phone and prompt you to enable USB debugging on the phone if you haven't.
It doesn’t matter if you have no knowledge of USB debugging. Here comes a clear instruction for you.
STEP 3. Choose to Restore Text Messages
Once the computer and the phone are connected, the program will show the below screen and you can choose what kind of data you would like to recover from Android. You can choose to recover deleted messages, photos, WhatsApp messages, contacts, videos from Android or just select all. In this case, choose "Messages" and click "Next".
STEP 4. Install FonePaw App on Your Android Phone
The program will try to scan your Android phone for deleted messages. To gain permission to access your phone data, the FonePaw Android app needs to be installed on your phone. Therefore, the Android Data Recovery program will ask you to enable Install via USB.
Follow the on-screen instruction to enable the option and tap Install when you see the following pop-up on your Android phone.
STEP 5. Give Permission to Scan Deleted Messages
When FonePaw asks you to allow its access to read messages on your phone, tap Allow. Otherwise, the program is unable to find deleted text messages from your Android phone.
After you have granted all privileges, click Scan Authorized Files to scan out the deleted messages.
STEP 6. Preview and Recover Deleted Text Messages on Android
The program will first perform a standard scan on your phone. If you can't find the missing messages that you need after the standard scan, click Deep Scan to find more (root required).
After the deep scan, deleted messages will be displayed in red font. If you want to look at the deleted SMS only, just tap "Only display the deleted items" to ON.
Click the text messages you want to restore and then press the "Recover" button; the program will recover the messages to PC.
As it is shown in the following screenshot, FonePaw Android Data Recovery saves the deleted messages on your computer in CSV and HTML formats. You can open the CSV file in Microsoft Excel or in a text editor like Notepad. It is small-sized and easy to be printed out.
And the HTML file will display the recovered messages in a more organized and clear manner. So if you just want to read the messages, HTML might be a better choice for you.
Free Download Buy with 20% off Free Download Buy with 20% off
That’s all about how to retrieve deleted text messages on Android with FonePaw Android Data Recovery. Considering you may still be confused, we also collect some tips and frequently asked questions with detailed answers. Hope they can help you with your Android data recovery.
Extra Tip: How to Find Archived Text Messages on Android
Sometimes, you may think you deleted a text message on the Android phone, but actually, you have only archived it and cannot find it (If you swipe a message in the Messages app, it will be archived according to the default setting, so you will not see it from the Home screen). So here it shows how to find and recover the archived text messages on Android for you to double-check before the recovery.
Step 1. Open Messages app on Android.
Step 2. Tap the three-dot menu at the top right corner of the interface.
Step 3. Select Archived to view the archived messages on your Android.
Step 4. Long tap the text message you want to unarchive and then tap the up-arrow icon at the top menu to recover.
Note:
- You can also try to send a message to an archived conversion, then the conversation will automatically return to your messages Home screen.
If there are no archived text messages on your Android phone, you may need to think about retrieving the deleted ones.
FAQ: Can I Recover Deleted Messages on Android Without Root?
NO. For those who search for questions like “Where are deleted text messages stored on Android?”, we have to make it clear that deleted text messages are stored in a hidden folder of your phone memory, which can't be accessed by regular file explorers. Only after rooting your Android phone can an Android data recovery app gain access to the deleted messages.
Therefore, although there are apps claiming that they can retrieve deleted text messages from Android without rooting, it is very hard to get back your deleted text messages without rooting.
FAQ: Is it Possible to Recover Deleted Text Messages on Android Without Computer?
YES. Perhaps you think that it is complicated to use third-party software to recover deleted text messages from your Android phone. And in fact, there are many message apps or services that can help you better manage text messages. They even provide the option to recover your deleted text messages from the Cloud backups without computers.
Here we'll recommend an ideal choice.
How to restore deleted text messages on Android from Google Drive
If you have backed up your phone to Google Drive, the backup may contain your deleted texts. Go to Settings > Accounts and backup > Backup and restore. Under your Google account, tap Google Account to check if there is a Google Drive backup created before the messages were deleted. If there is an available backup, you may restore the backup and get the deleted messages back. However, by restoring a backup, everything created after the backup will be erased.
How to retrieve deleted text messages on Android with a phone app?
You may also be curious whether you can recover permanently deleted messages with a data recovery phone app. Actually, it may work, but it is not recommended, especially when your phone is not rich in free space.
As you need to retrieve deleted messages, the most essential thing is to prevent the deleted data to be overwritten. However, downloading and installing a new app on your Android phone will definitely create new data on your Android internal memory and could potentially overwrite the data you need, and thus erase them permanently before you can eventually and factually retrieve the deleted messages. It’s too risky and that’s also why we would suggest you recover deleted texts on Android with a desktop program like FonePaw Android Data Recovery.
Free Download Buy with 20% off Free Download Buy with 20% off
Can I recover deleted text messages on Android for free?
If you use Samsung phones, the answer will be YES. Because Samsung phones come with a recycle bin for deleted text messages. You can easily retrieve deleted text messages for free from the recycle bin.
FAQ: How to Back up Messages on Android Phones
Other than retrieving deleted messages from Android, it shouldn't be neglected that we back up messages to avoid possible data loss. For the reason that once a message is deleted, there's no perfect solution that will absolutely get the message back.
How to back up SMS text messages to Google Drive
As we've mentioned, your Google Drive is a reliable service that even help you find accidentally deleted text messages. But one important premise should be that you need to constantly back up data on your Android phone with Google Drive. And it's fairly simple!
Open Google Drive app, tap Settings > Google backup > SMS messages and enable SMS backup.
How to back up SMS text messages to PC
Another option is to back up text messages to a computer via some other Android SMS backup/transferring apps or desktop tools.
FonePaw DoTrans helps you to transfer messages from Android to PC or even other phones in one click so that you can easily save important messages on different devices as a backup. Just launch the program, connect your Android to PC, find the "Messages" tab, and you will be able to select the SMS you need and export them to PC in CSV, HTML, or TXT format.
Above is the whole guide on how to retrieve deleted text messages on Android. Hit the download button below to get FonePaw Android Data Recovery. Hope you can get back your deleted text messages immediately!
