If you have lost your message on Android, you can recover it. Most Android devices come with Google Messages and often have the RCS feature enabled. If you have enabled backup for your messages, you can recover all your messages even after a factory reset. Today in this article, we will share how you can recover deleted text messages on Android.
How to Read Deleted Messages on Android
There are a few ways to recover deleted text on Android devices, and it’s important to know how often you back up your data to help recover the message. If you constantly archive your inbox, OEMs like Samsung have a built-in Recycle Bin for Messages to store deleted messages for a month. You can also find several tools available to help recover deleted messages.
Recover Deleted Messages using Google App Archive
It’s quite straightforward to recover messages, and here are the following steps:
- Open the Message app on your Android device and tap on the triple-dot menu that appears in the upper-right corner.
- Within the context menu, click on “Archived,” and then you will find the message that you have archived.
- After that, long-press the message that you want to recover. When you long-press on the message, an option to “unarchive” will appear on the top navigation bar (the logo shows with an up-arrow icon).
Unlike Samsung’s Message app, there is no “Bin” for deleting messages in Google’s Message app. If you haven’t enabled Google Drive backup on your device and have deleted the text, you will have to rely on a third-party application.
Recovering Deleted Text Messages from the Recycle Bin
Samsung OneUI comes with a custom Google Message app, and whenever you delete a message, it goes to the recycle bin, where you can recover the deleted message. The message remains in the recycle bin for up to 30 days from the day of deletion.
To recover a deleted message:
- Open the Message app, and then click on the triple-dot menu that appears in the upper-right corner.
- Go to the Recycle Bin and then look through the messages. Long-press the message you want to recover.
- Tap on “Restore” which appears at the bottom of the screen, and then the message will be moved to the primary inbox.
Once you recover the message, it will be moved to your primary inbox. Check for the message, as it should reappear in your default messaging app.
Recover text messages from carriers
If you have subscribed to backup services from your carrier, you can directly recover your text messages. Some apps, like Backup & Sync from AT&T and Verizon, have this backup functionality to restore your messages. However, this feature is not offered by all carriers, so it may not be available to you.
Lastly, you can reach out to the sender and request that they send the message again, since they may still have a copy of the text. You can then forward it to yourself. Now that you have lost a message once, make sure to archive messages instead of deleting them. If you can back up, then do so. It takes a lot of storage, but simply activate backup for your messages and avoid permanent deletion. Once backup is enabled, your text message files will be safe to recover later. To enable backup, head over to backup settings from the device settings and then enable backup.
If your default messaging app doesn’t have backup support, consider using a third-party messaging app that has backup and recovery text message support. SMS apps like Microsoft SMS Organiser have backup functionality that backs up your data to Google Drive.