How to Recover Deleted WhatsApp Messages on your phone. Learn how to recover archived or deleted WhatsApp messages, plus backup strategies to keep your messages safe in the future.
Recovering deleted or missing WhatsApp messages may be possible, depending on the situation. Let’s look at how to recover deleted WhatsApp messages on your iPhone or Android device.
We’ll then teach you how to set up an advanced WhatsApp backup plan to ensure you never lose any of your WhatsApp messages again.
Understanding WhatsApp Chat Backups
In order to retrieve deleted WhatsApp messages, you must have previously enabled Chat Backup in the app’s settings. To reach this, open Settings (on the bottom bar of the iPhone app; in the three-dot menu at the top-right on Android).
From there, head to Chats > Chat backup. This will show you when WhatsApp last created a backup. If you’ve never backed up, then you, unfortunately, won’t be able to recover any messages. Assuming you have backed up, note the date shown here, as it can affect what you’re able to recover.
The app offers several backup frequencies (along with the option to encrypt your WhatsApp backups):
- Daily
- Weekly
- Monthly
- Off
On Android, WhatsApp makes a local backup every night, but this won’t help you if you lose your phone. This is why cloud backups are vital.
WhatsApp deletes older backup files as you create new ones. The iPhone app only keeps the latest backup file, while the Android version keeps “up to the last seven days’ worth” of backup files.
The right backup frequency depends on your needs. Daily backups mean you’ll be able to easily recover WhatsApp messages soon after deleting them. Conversely, weekly auto-backups allow you to go further back in time to recover deleted WhatsApp messages, at the expense of losing recent chat messages.
See the “An Advanced WhatsApp Backup Strategy for Android” section below for more info about better backups on Android.
How to Recover Deleted WhatsApp Messages by Restoring Backups
You can restore your WhatsApp backup by simply uninstalling and reinstalling WhatsApp on your device.
When you reinstall the app, you will be prompted to restore your message history from the latest backup file by tapping Restore. Make sure to do it when prompted, as you can’t restore the backup file later.
This method of recovering deleted WhatsApp messages works on both Android and iPhone, as long as you have a backup. Keep in mind that you can only recover backed-up messages within your selected auto-backup frequency, however.
For instance, if you’ve set the app to back up daily, you can recover any deleted chats before the next daily backup occurs. But if the app has made a new backup since you deleted certain messages, they’re lost for good.
How to Recover Deleted Media on WhatsApp
Hopefully, restoring your backup file allowed you to retrieve any deleted media from your chats. If that didn’t work, however, read our guide to recovering deleted photos from WhatsApp.
On Android, you can simply open a file explorer app and navigate to /WhatsApp/Media. From there, simply sift through the folders until you find the deleted photos you want to recover.
On iPhone, you should have a backup copy of images saved to your device if you have the Save to Camera Roll option enabled at Settings > Chats in WhatsApp.
Check the above guide for additional methods of media recovery.
How to Recover Older Deleted Chats on WhatsApp
Getting deleted messages back after a new WhatsApp backup has run is slightly more difficult. Your success will depend on your selected auto-backup frequency.
If you’re using an iPhone, your only other method is to restore an iPhone backup that you made before deleting the WhatsApp chats. There are third-party apps that claim to help you recover WhatsApp chats, but they aren’t cheap and offer no guarantees. Whether you use these are up to how much you value the missing messages.
There’s a more advanced strategy for Android devices since the OS lets you access local backup files. Before we dive into the process, here’s an overview of restoring older WhatsApp chats on Android:
- Open a file explorer app on your Android device.
- Navigate to /WhatsApp/Databases.
- Rename msgstore.db.crypt12 to msgstore-latest.db.crypt12.
- Rename msgstore-YYYY-MM-DD.1.db.crypt12 to msgstore.db.crypt12.
- Uninstall WhatsApp.
- If Google Drive backups are enabled, open Google Drive, slide out the left menu, tap Backups, and delete the WhatsApp backup file.
- Reinstall WhatsApp.
- When prompted, restore from the backup file.
How to Export Retrieved WhatsApp Messages and Return to the Latest Backup
When you walk through the above, you’ll lose any messages created since the backup you restored. If you only performed that process to restore a few deleted messages, and don’t want to lose recent messages, you can export the retrieved chat messages and then restore WhatsApp to the latest backup. You’ll have to run through the entire process again, but it’s not difficult.
To export messages, open the chat containing the messages you want to save. Tap the three-dot Menu button at the top-right, followed by More > Export chat. If the chat has media, you’ll see an option to export Without media or to Include media.
Including media will add all recent images as attachments, which obviously increases the size of the export file. You can export up to 10,000 messages with media, or 40,000 messages without media.
After you make your choice, choose an app on your phone to share the text file (and attachments, if applicable) containing your messages. You can email this to yourself, add it to cloud storage, or similar. Repeat this for any other chats with messages you want to save.
Once you’re done exporting, follow the steps in the above section again to access your WhatsApp backups. When you come to renaming the backup files, reverse the process:
- Rename the existing msgstore.db.crypt12 (which contains the messages you retrieved) to msgstore-YYYY-MM-DD.1.db.crypt12, using today’s date. In case there’s already a file with today’s date, use DD.2 instead.
- Next, rename msgstore-latest.db.crypt12 (the latest backup created when you started) back to msgstore.db.crypt12.
Uninstall WhatsApp, delete your Google Drive backup again if needed, and reinstall the app. After you restore from the backup, your latest chats will reappear. The messages you exported won’t appear inside WhatsApp, but you can at least see them in the text file whenever you need them.