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How to recover iMessage conversation deleted from iCloud

I seemed to have deleted permanently one of my most important conversations on iMessage, by "Settings -> Apple ID -> iCloud -> Manage Account Storage -> Messages -> Top Conversations -> Edit", and then deleted the conversation. After this my local conversation was deleted immediately and could be found anymore.


Is there any way to recover the deleted conversation? That conversation is very important to me, and iCloud didn't even have a prompt to let me double confirm. Any help will be appreciated.

iPhone XR

Posted on Jul 17, 2023 12:21 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jul 17, 2023 4:50 AM

Any messages that can be restored are in the Recently Deleted folder in messages. You need to be running iOS 16 or later on your phone. See, Recover deleted text messages on your iPhone or iPad - Apple Support


otherwise, those messages were gone as soon as you deleted.

4 replies

Jul 17, 2023 7:52 PM in response to Jimmy_812

Jimmy_812 Said:

"How to recover iMessage conversation deleted from iCloud"

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Recovering Messages:


What to Consider:

A. Restore from Today's Backup:

Restore your iPhone from a backup of it that contains these messages, and you could recover them.


B. Check Messages App:

If messages was enabled on your iPhone along with your Apple computer, then check and see if the Messages app is enabled on your Mac to see if it exists in it. You'd start up your Mac, not connecting to the Internet, and open the Massages app. Then proceed from there with retrieving it. Important: Be certain you do not connect to the Internet while booting up, as syncing would delete it. So, power off your router to avoid the connection.


C.  Check your Carrier’s Site:

Log in to your Carrier’s site, seeing if you can view a history there. Doing so, I can see a call log going back 90 days —but not a text messages log.


D. Check Recently Deleted:

See if they reside in Recently Deleted (iOS16 only, as of this date)

Jul 17, 2023 7:26 PM in response to muguy

Hi muguy,


Thanks for the response. Actually I am running iOS 16, but still the deleted message is not in Recently Deleted. I guess it's because I was deleting from iCloud, rather than normally from the iMessage app.


Could you confirm that once messages are deleted from iCloud ("Settings -> Apple ID -> iCloud -> Manage Account Storage -> Messages -> Top Conversations -> Edit") they are unrecoverable? Thank you.

How to recover iMessage conversation deleted from iCloud

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