It has happened to the best of us. You delete a photo, or a series of photos, and realize you deleted one (or more) you didn’t mean to delete. Fear not, because Apple keeps your deleted photos in a neat folder for a limited period of time where you can retrieve them. As long as you check within the appropriate time frame, you can totally get them back.
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How to find deleted photos on iPhone
- Open the Photos app on your iPhone.
- Select the Albums tab.
- Scroll down to Recently Deleted (all the way at the bottom of the page) and select.
- If you’re using iOS 16 or higher (as well as iPadOS 16.1 or higher), you will have to use Face ID or Touch ID to unlock the album.
- From here, you’ll see all the photos you recently deleted. If there’s one you want to recover, select it and tap Recover.
- To recover more than one photo, tap Select at the top, right.
- Tap each of the photos you want to recover.
- Tap the three dots at the bottom, right.
- Select Recover.
- To recover everything you deleted in the last 30 days, tap Select at the top, right on the main album page.
- Tap the three dots at the bottom, right.
- Select Recover all.
Your deleted photos are safe and secure... for a time
Don’t assume that just because you have iCloud sync activated, that your old photos will naturally be retained. With iCloud syncing, once you delete a photo or video from a device connected to your iCloud account, it will be deleted from all others, including your iCloud storage. The only way to delete photos from one of the latest iPhones but keep them available in iCloud storage is to turn off iCloud Photo Sharing.
If you make the mistake of accidentally deleting something though, just follow the steps above. You have a full month to recover these deleted photos or videos before they are gone forever. The Face ID security step means that no one else can get into your Recently Deleted photo album to see what you have removed, only you, which is a nice touch for privacy.
While you’re at it, it’s worth nothing that there’s a way to retrieve deleted messages from an iPhone, too. There’s a limited time frame for those as well, but it’s just as easy to recover them.