Much of our lives are included in our devices, especially our iPhones and iPads, so mistakenly deleting the necessary messages can feel particularly devastating.
Whether information or personal, you can panic in a state of mind and not be able to get the messages and conversations you need.
Fortunately, Apple has a built-in method to recover recently deleted messages.
Woman recovering deleted text on iPhone (Kurt “Cyberguy” Knutsson)
Organize text by enabling message filtering on your iPhone or iPad
Have you deleted a text message or conversation thread on your iPhone or iPad? The instructions below depend on whether you have turned on message filtering. What message filtering does is to categorize messages into separate lists of known senders, unknown senders, and unread messages. However, some people have not yet enabled this feature. If you want to enable message filtering, follow these steps:
- It will open Settings app on your iPhone or iPad
- Scroll down and tap App
- Tap message
- Scroll to the Message Filtering section and turn on the switch Filter unknown senders
How to enable message filtering on your iPhone (Kurt “Cyberguy” Knutsson)
Once enabled, this feature automatically sorts messages into different categories to manage your inbox and helps you reduce clutter from spam or unnecessary text. You can view filtered messages by tapping the Filter button in the top left corner of the Messages app. When you turn on message filtering, you can access four main categories:
- All Messages: Show all text regardless of sender
- Known Senders: Displays messages from contacts in your address book
- Unknown Sender: List messages from numbers that are not in contact
- Unread messages: Show all unread text
iPhone Message Filtering Category (Kurt “Cyberguy” Knutsson)
Not only does this filtering system help you organize your messages, it can reduce notifications from unknown senders and reduce the number of interruptions from spam or unnecessary text.
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How to recover deleted text messages on iPhone or iPad
Next, recover deleted messages on your iPhone or iPad. If you are running iOS 16 or on an iPads 16.1 or later, you can use the following steps to retrieve deleted conversations in the Messages app:
If you have not turned on message filtering
- Open it on your phone or iPad Message App
- Tap edit Top left corner
Steps to recover deleted text messages when message filtering is not enabled (Kurt “Cyberguy” Knutsson)
- Select View Recently deleted Dropdown menu
- You can tap either Recover everything If you want to recover all deleted text, in the lower right corner, tap to confirm your selection Recover the message;
- Or you can tap Individual text messages Recover and then select Recover In the lower right corner, tap to confirm your selection Recover the message
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Steps to recover deleted text messages when message filtering is not enabled (Kurt “Cyberguy” Knutsson)
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If you turn on message filtering
- Open it on your phone or iPad Message App
- Tap Filter Top left corner
- Select Recently deleted
Steps to recover deleted text messages when message filtering is turned on (Kurt “Cyberguy” Knutsson)
- You can tap either Recover everything If you want to recover all deleted text, in the lower right corner, tap to confirm your selection Recover the message;
- Or you can tap Individual text messages Recover and then select Recover In the lower right corner, tap to confirm your selection Recover the message
Steps to recover deleted text messages when message filtering is turned on (Kurt “Cyberguy” Knutsson)
Note: You can only recover messages and conversations that have been deleted within the last 30-40 days. Additionally, if you delete messages before updating to iOS 16 or iPados 16.1 or later, you will not be able to recover these messages or conversations.
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Important takeouts for your cart
Whether your finger is too fast and accidentally pressing delete or you need to browse messages that have already been deleted, Apple has created an option to help you recover recently deleted messages. If you're running the latest OS, you should be able to easily recover recently deleted messages.
Have you accidentally deleted a text message you noticed later? How did you recover your message? Write us and let us know cyberguy.com/contact.
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