If you accidentally deleted messages in WhatsApp and want to recover them on your iPhone or Android device, we’re going to show you how to do it in three ways. There are several other methods to retrieve lost messages on WhatsApp but what we’ll discuss should fix the chop.
WhatsApp offers auto backup for your chat history on a daily, weekly or monthly basis so you can easily restore back your chats when you need them. It also provides the option to backup chat messages on cloud services.
Here are the troubleshooting steps you can take to recover your deleted messages or chats in WhatsApp.
How to recover deleted messages in WhatsApp on Android or iPhone
Using Auto Backup
This is the easiest and most basic method to recover deleted WhatsApp messages. To do this:
- Uninstall and reinstall WhatsApp
- Follow the on-screen steps to set up the app again
- Restore your chat history from the backup by tapping Restore on Android or Restore Chat History on iPhone
Using Local backup
Auto backup is the simplest and most convenient method to recover deleted WhatsApp messages, but its limitation is that cloud backup only stores the most recent chat history. When you create a new backup, it overwrites the older one and you can’t restore it. In this case, you can use the local backup that stores data for up to 7 days in your phone’s memory. This only works on Android devices though, so take the steps below:
- Open File Explorer and go to Internal Storage>WhatsApp>Databases (for SD cards, go to SD card>WhatsApp>Databases. A list of the recent backup files will be available with the date and time
- Select the backup you want restored and rename the file from msgstore-YYYY-MM-DD.1.db.crypt12 to db.crypt12
- Uninstall and reinstall WhatsApp
- If you have backups enabled in Google Drive, rename or remove the backup file from the drive or the chat will be restored instead from Google Drive backup and not local backup
- If prompted, restore local backup file by going to the location of the msgstore.db.crypt12 file
Using Third Party tools
You can recover deleted messages in WhatsApp using third party data recovery tools. There are several tools available to do this, which you can download and install and then connect your device to recover the phone data. They also let you selectively recover the items that you need, if you don’t want everything.
Elsie is a tech writer with 8+ years professional experience. For Tech News Watch, she brings rich experience contributing to topics such as Windows, MacOS, Android, and iOS among others. In her spare time, she loves checking out the latest tech trends, gadgets, and news, listening to music and cars.
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