Last updated: September 12, 2016
How to recover iPhone photos you accidentally deleted
Can you recover iPhone photos you’ve deleted by accident, or are they gone forever? Smartphone cameras have continued to improve with every subsequent device upgrade. And with each upgrade, it seems we take more and more photographs, requiring more and more storage. Picture-taking has indeed become part of our culture, no matter whether the photos are of ourselves, or of something or someone else. Our shutter-flapping lifestyles often result in errant portraits of feet, floors, pocket interiors, and blurry shots of dog butts and Junior’s first goal.
To help preserve storage on our devices, we have learned to quickly delete those photos that didn’t show off our best Ansel Adams efforts. But what if your trigger-happy finger was too quick to punch the Trash icon, and you lost your award-winning Fido sphincter photo forever? Fortunately, iOS includes a safeguard for just such a case. The steps below will guide you on how to recover those photos, or permanently delete them from your iPhone or iPad.
Deleted photos are held for 30 days
1. Launch the native Photos app.
2. The Moments section will display by default. At the bottom of the display, tap the Albums icon.
3. A list of your Albums will display. Scroll down to Recently Deleted. iOS will automatically store deleted photos in this folder for 30 days. After that time, deletion of photos is permanent.
When you view the Recently Deleted album, a list of photos you deleted in the past 30 days will display. The opportunity exists to either permanently delete a photo, or to recover a photo.
4. View the Recently Deleted album. Thumbnails display the number of days until automatic deletion for each photo. Just tap the image you want to either recover or permanently delete. Next, at the bottom of the display, click Recover to move the photo back into your Camera Roll (or Delete to permanently delete the photo from your device).
5. Use the prompt to confirm the action you selected.
When you click Recover Photo, the image file moves from Recently Deleted back to your Camera Roll as a result. Thank you for visiting Tech Help Knowledgebase to learn how to recover iPhone photos you deleted.
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