Where do i find deleted photos on my iphone

Accidentally deleted a photo? Don't worry—recovering deleted photos on your iPhone is easy when you follow these simple steps.

We’ve all experienced the near-instant regret of accidentally trashing a photo we love. Maybe while deleting a series of bad selfies you got rid of a cherished photo with friends or a screenshot of your favorite dinner recipe. Maybe you deleted all the photos on your iPhone only to realize you should’ve kept the shots from your grandpa’s birthday. Or maybe you were worried that Apple was scanning your photos and sent that adorable pic of your kids in the bath straight to the garbage. Thankfully, learning how to recover deleted photos on an iPhone isn’t difficult.

Just know this: You have to act fast (or at least in a timely manner). To make that easy for you, we’ve listed all the steps you need to take the next time you want to recover deleted photos on an iPhone. You may as well bookmark this page—the iPhone tricks below will come in handy when you need them most. When you’re done, brush up on other time-saving iPhone hacks, like how to hide private photos on your phone.

How to recover deleted photos on iPhone

Let’s start with the simplest method for recovering deleted iPhone photos: Retrieve them from your “Recently Deleted” folder. One big caveat: This is an option only if it’s been no more than 30 days since you deleted the photo. After that, photos are permanently deleted.

  1. Open the Photos app.
  2. Tap the “Albums” icon at the bottom of the screen.
  3. Scroll down to the bottom of the page, then select “Recently Deleted.”
  4. Tap “Select” in the top-right corner of the screen.
  5. Tap each photograph that you want to recover. (To recover every photo you’ve deleted, choose “Recover All” in the lower-right corner of the screen.)
  6. Tap “Recover” in the lower-right corner.

That’s it. The recovered images will once again appear in your album. Now you’re free to edit your iPhone photos like a pro and share them with your friends.

How to retrieve deleted photos through iCloud

Let’s be real: You’re not scanning your “Recently Deleted” folder on a regular basis, so there’s a chance you’ll delete a cherished photo without immediately realizing it. That’s why it’s smart to know how to recover deleted photos on an iPhone that are more than 30 days old.

You might be able to get them back by restoring a recent iCloud backup of your phone. Just know that everything will be restored to how it was at the time of the backup, including your files and any apps that were on your phone.

  1. Protect your current data and photos by backing them all up to iCloud first.
  2. Do a factory reset.
  3. Restore your phone from a backup that’s old enough to contain the photos you want to recover.
  4. Open the Photos app and confirm that the pictures you want to recover are there. If they’re not, simply repeat the process with an older backup until you’ve found the desired photos.

We know what you’re thinking: You want the deleted photos and your most recent iPhone settings. Have your cake and eat it too by uploading the recently restored photos to a storage service in the cloud or emailing them to yourself (make sure to choose the highest-quality version of the photo). Then restore your phone to its most recent settings.

How to retrieve deleted photos through iTunes

Most people use iCloud for no-fuss photo backups. But if you still use iTunes for this, discovering how to recover deleted photos on an iPhone is still pretty simple.

  1. Connect your iPhone to a Mac with macOS Mojave or earlier, or to a PC.
  2. Click on the iPhone icon that appears in the upper-left corner of your computer’s iTunes window.
  3. Select the “Summary” tab on the left-hand side of iTunes.
  4. Choose “Restore Backup” under the Backups section.
  5. Select the backup you want to restore.
  6. Wait for the restore to complete, then look through the photos on your computer to make sure the restored pictures are there.

Once you’ve learned how to recover deleted photos on your iPhone, brush up on other smartphone skills, like deleting your iPhone call history, hiding text messages and running image searches using your iPhone photos.

Sources:

  • Apple: “Delete and hide photos and videos on iPhone”
  • Apple: “If you’re missing photos or videos in the Photos app”
  • Apple: “Restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch in iTunes on PC”

Where do i find deleted photos on my iphone

  • November 16, 2021

Are you ruthless with your iPhone photos, deleting all the shots you don’t want to keep on your phone so that things stay organized? With only so much storage space to work with, staying organized is the first hurdle that iPhone photographers face. The downside to being super organized is that there may come a time when you delete something you wish you hadn’t. 

If you’ve ever accidentally deleted a treasured photo, you know how anxiety-inducing it can be, and you may be wondering if you can recover deleted photos from your iPhone, how to retrieve deleted photos from a backup, and even how to recover deleted photos from iCloud. 

Here are some steps you can take to recover photos that you’ve accidentally deleted. Step number one — don’t panic!

Where do i find deleted photos on my iphone
Where do i find deleted photos on my iphone

How to find deleted photos on iPhone

Where do deleted photos go when you tap the trash can on your iPhone? Because we all make mistakes, photos that are deleted from your phone are stored in a recently deleted album, where they are saved for 30 days. In other words, you can breathe your first sigh of relief.

How to recover deleted photos from iPhone

  1. Open the Photos app and tap Albums.
  2. Scroll down to the Other Albums section and tap Recently Deleted.
  3. Here you will find all the photos you’ve deleted in the past 30 days. 
  4. Choose the photo you want to recover and tap Recover. Your photo will be saved in your Photo Library.
  • Where do i find deleted photos on my iphone
  • Where do i find deleted photos on my iphone

Can you recover permanently deleted photos on iPhone?

The short answer to this question is maybe. Whether or not you can recover permanently deleted photos will depend on if your photo was saved in iCloud or if you have a backup from which you can recover your photo. In many but not all cases, it is likely that you will still be able to recover your photo.

How to recover deleted photos from iCloud

If you were signed in to iCloud when you deleted your photo, then your photos will remain on the iCloud platform for 30 days. If, for some reason, you were signed out of iCloud when you deleted your photo, you may be able to retrieve it past the 30-day mark. Visit icloud.com on the web and then follow these steps:

  1. Sign in to iCloud and click on Photos.
  2. Start your search by checking the Recently Deleted folder. 
  3. Select the photo you want to retrieve and click Recover.
  4. Depending on how long you’ve been signed out of iCloud, you may find your photo in your iCloud photo library. Open iCloud and click Photos.
  5. Scroll through until you find the photo you’re looking for. Click the download icon at the top of the screen to save the photo to a folder on your computer. 
Where do i find deleted photos on my iphone

How to retrieve deleted photos from a backup 

If you’ve been backing up your iPhone photos to your Mac, then you may be able to recover your photos that way. To help reduce the risk of losing a photo in the future, here’s a tip — back up your iPhone data to iTunes or Finder using a Mac. Apple Support has instructions on how to do this. 

The downside to this method is that iTunes only allows you to restore your entire backup, overwriting everything currently on your iPhone. This means you may manage to find your photo, but you also might lose more recent data from your phone. 

If you’re only looking to retrieve photos, the best way to extract them from your iPhone backup is to use a third-party app. Here’s how to retrieve deleted photos from your iPhone using EaseUS MobiSaver. 

  1. Download EaseUS MobiSaver and open it on your computer (EaseUS makes this software for Macs and PCs).
  2. Choose Recover from iTunes and then choose your iPhone from the menu and click Scan.
  3. You will be able to preview your lost photos. Choose the ones you want to restore. Then save them to a folder on your computer. 

Can you recover permanently deleted photos without a backup? 

Okay, so you deleted your favorite photos months ago, and you haven’t backed up your iPhone. Have you reached the end of the road? There’s one more course of action you can try, and it involves third-party software. PhoneRescue is a professional data recovery tool that can be used as a last resort. The only caveat is that it will work only if your photos haven’t been overwritten by other data.

PhoneRescue can be downloaded to your PC or Mac. Plug your iPhone into your computer using a USB port and scan your device for your deleted photos using PhoneRescue. You can restore all of your deleted data, or you can choose to scan only for lost images. You will be able to preview photos before restoring them. 

Mistakes happen, and there’s a good chance that you will, at some point, accidentally delete a photo before realizing that you want to keep it. Hopefully, the solutions outlined in this article will help with the recovery. 

This was about:
  • Cleanup

Tara Schatz

Travel writer. Photographer. Lover of dogs and the outdoors.

Is there a way to find permanently deleted photos on iPhone?

If you have your iPhone, go to Photos > Albums, scroll down, tap Recently Deleted, tap Select, then select all the photos and tap Recover. Your photos are back where they used to be. Easy! After that, select the photo you want to retrieve and tap Recover.

How can I find my deleted pictures?

If you deleted an item and want it back, check your trash to see if it's there..
On your Android phone or tablet, open the Google Photos app ..
At the bottom, tap Library Trash ..
Touch and hold the photo or video you want to restore..
At the bottom, tap Restore. The photo or video will be back: In your phone's gallery app..