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Accidentally deleted a text message. How can I get it back?

Accidentally deleted a text message...I need to get it back

iPhone 8 Plus, iOS 13

Posted on Oct 2, 2020 5:13 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Oct 2, 2020 5:15 PM

if you go to Settings > [your name] > iCloud.. is the switch turned on for Messages?

If it is, you cannot recover your deleted text message.


If that switch is off, then you could recover a text message if you have a backup that contains the text. You'd have to restore your iPhone to that backup. (in doing so, you could lose data between now and whenever your backup is from)

2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Oct 2, 2020 5:15 PM in response to denisekgarfield

if you go to Settings > [your name] > iCloud.. is the switch turned on for Messages?

If it is, you cannot recover your deleted text message.


If that switch is off, then you could recover a text message if you have a backup that contains the text. You'd have to restore your iPhone to that backup. (in doing so, you could lose data between now and whenever your backup is from)

Oct 2, 2020 5:15 PM in response to denisekgarfield

You can’t get back a deleted text message unless you do not sync text messages to iCloud, and you have a backup that contains the delete message. In that one case you can restore the backup to the phone. However, this will overwrite everything on the phone, not just the lost message.


If you do sync messages to iCloud (Settings/[your name]/iCloud - Messages ON) then there is no way to recover the message.

Accidentally deleted a text message. How can I get it back?

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