Our lifetime included on our devices, especially on iPhones or iPads, can be particularly broken if you accidentally delete messages you still need.
Neither information nor personal, the required messages or conversations cannot be retrieved.
Fortunately, Apple has a built-in way to recover recently deleted messages.
A woman recovers deleted text on iPhone (Kurt “Cyberguy” Knutsson)
Enable message filtering on your iPhone or iPad to organize your text
Deleted text messages or conversation threads on iPhone or iPad? The instructions below depend on whether you have message filtering turned on. The method of message filtering is to classify your messages into separate lists such as known senders, unknown senders, and unread messages. However, some people may not have enabled this feature yet. If you want to enable message filtering, see the following steps:
- Open Setting up the application On your iPhone or iPad
- Scroll down and click application
- Tap information
- Scroll to the Message Filtering section and turn on the switch Filter unknown sender
Steps to enable message filtering on iPhone (Kurt “Cyberguy” Knutsson)
When enabled, this feature will automatically divide messages into different categories, making it easier to manage your inbox and reduce the confusion of spam or unnecessary text. You can view filtered messages by clicking the Filter button in the upper left corner of the Message Application. As message filtering is turned on, you will have access to four main categories:
- All messages: Show all text regardless of sender
- Known sender: Show contact messages in your address book
- Unknown sender: List messages from numbers in contacts
- Unread message: Show all unread text
Message filtering categories on iPhone (Kurt “Cyberguy” Knutsson)
This filtering system not only helps organize your messages, but also reduces notifications from unknown senders, thus reducing the number of spam or text breaks that do not require.
Avast’s $16.5 million settlement: Find out if you are eligible for a refund
How to recover deleted text messages on iPhone or iPad
Now, let’s recover those deleted messages on your iPhone or iPad. For devices running iOS 16 later or iPados 16.1 or later, you can use the following steps to retrieve deleted conversations in the Messages app:
If you do not turn on message filtering
- On your phone or iPad, open Message Application
- Tap edit In the upper left corner
If you do not turn on message filtering, please restore deleted text messages (Kurt “Cyberguy” Knutsson)
- choose Recently deleted shows In the drop-down menu
- You can click Recover all If you want to recover all deleted text, please go to the bottom right corner and confirm your selection by mining Recover message;
- Or you can click Single text message You want to recover and select recover In the lower right corner, then confirm your selection by attacking Recover message
How to Stop Spam SMS on your phone
If you do not turn on message filtering, please restore deleted text messages (Kurt “Cyberguy” Knutsson)
Never lose text messages by pinning text messages
If message filtering is turned on
- On your phone or iPad, open Message Application
- Tap Filter In the upper left corner
- choose Recently deleted
Steps to restore deleted text messages if message filtering is turned on (Kurt “Cyberguy” Knutsson)
- You can click Recover all If you want to recover all deleted text, please go to the bottom right corner and confirm your selection by mining Recover message;
- Or you can click Single text message You want to recover and select recover In the lower right corner, then confirm your selection by attacking Recover message
Steps to restore deleted text messages if message filtering is turned on (Kurt “Cyberguy” Knutsson)
Please note: Messages and conversations that have been deleted in the past 30-40 days can be restored. Additionally, if you delete a message before updating iOS 16 or iPados 16.1 or later, you cannot recover those messages or conversations.
How to tell if someone has read your text message
Kurt’s key points
Whether your fingers move too fast, you accidentally deleted the delete, or you now need to refer to messages you have deleted, Apple has the option to help you recover the recently deleted messages. If you are running the latest operating system, you should be able to recover recently deleted messages easily.
Have you ever accidentally deleted text messages you realized later? How did you recover messages? Let’s write to us cyberguy.com/contact.
For more technical tips and security alerts for me, please subscribe to my free online reporting newsletter cyberguy.com/newsletter.
Ask Kurt a question, or let us know what stories you want us to cover.
Follow Kurt on his social channels:
Answer the most questioned online gu questions:
New things from Kurt:
Copyright 2025 CyberGuy.com. all rights reserved.
