Have you deleted a text message by mistake? It has happened to all of us. However, there is a way to reverse the mistake: you can recover deleted messages on your iPhone. We show you how it's done.

iPhone: Recover text message via iCloud.com
The easiest way to get a lost message back is not to reset the whole iPhone via an old backup, but to use a little trick. This works with the website iCloud.com.
- First you have to login to iCloud.com with your Apple ID.
- Then select iMessages and see if the text message you are looking for is still there.
- Switch to your iPhone, open "Settings", select the bar where your name is and then, at the bottom, "Apple ID, iCloud, iTunes & AppStore".
- Next, click on "iCloud" and switch off "Messages" with the slider.
- Then Apple asks you if you want to retain your messages on the phone. You must select "Keep on my iPhone".
- Now switch the slider for "Messages" in the iCloud settings back.
- A popup should appear. Select "Merge".
- After a moment the text messages should have recovered.
Restore messages via iTunes backup
If you made a backup of your iPhone when the required message was still there, you can follow these steps:
- Connect your iPhone to the computer where the backup is saved.
- If you have the backup on a Mac, open the Finder. If you want to restore the message from another laptop, open iTunes.
- On the Mac, you can find your iPhone under the category "Locations". In iTunes you will find your iPhone under "Devices". In both cases click on your phone to select it.
- No matter which device you use, you must now click on "Restore iPhone...". Then select the correct backup that still contains the deleted message.
- After restoring all your messages are back. The same also works with an iCloud backup.

Recovering text messages without any kind of backup?
Whether you use iTunes, iCloud, or a third party, you must have your data backed up somewhere. Without a backup, you unfortunately can’t recover deleted messages on your iPhone. So make sure to do a backup regularly.
Written by Felix Gillhuber
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Felix Gillhuber
Felix Gillhuber, born in 2001, has been a freelance author at BurdaForward since 2019. He is a specialist in all technical topics. Since 2020 he also writes English articles for How2ForU. He plans to study bioinformatics at the TU Munich after a year of work & travel in Canada. Feel free to contact him via Twitter or Facebook.