How to recover deleted messages from Samsung Galaxy Phone

 

As a responsible user, you are supposed to create a backup of your important data on a regular basis. In today’s computing world, there’s no storage device that can run forever so there’s always a chance that your messages, photos, videos, documents, and so on may disappear for good.

If you’re looking for a way to recover deleted messages from your Galaxy device, check out the following solutions in this post.

 

Method 1: Recover deleted text messages from Samsung backup

Samsung has offered a few official methods to create backup of user data over the years. Assuming you routinely sync or save your data using one of these means, there may be a way to recover deleted messages. There are different steps to save files and recover deleted messages for each of these backup methods. In general though, these steps easy to figure out.

 

Samsung Kies

Kies was the go-to official backup tool for Samsung smartphones for the past several years. In order to work, it must be installed on a computer. At the time of this writing, it is officially retired and only older devices may be running it. If you have an old Galaxy phone and you backed it up before using Kies, you may still be able to recover your messages.

If you have Kies on your computer, what you need to do is to connect your device to the said computer via a USB cable (thru MTP). By default, Kies should open automatically on its own after a successful connection. If that does not work, you can also manually launch Kies. Once your computer detects your phone, do the following:

1. Go to “Back up/Restore” tab.

2. Click the backup file,

3. Click “Restore” button to recover messages.

Kies has not changed over the years so the above steps should also not change. If there had been changes to how backup recovery works over the years, we suggest that you play around a bit with the program to figure it out.

Remember, you should only be able to recover deleted messages this way if you previously saved them in Kies. This program won’t be able to make your unsaved messages “magically” appear. The data must be located somewhere in your computer where Kies is installed in order for this to work.

Smart Switch

The Samsung Smart Switch is the successor to Kies. It’s currently the official backup tool among old and new Samsung Galaxy phones. While it looks significantly different superficially, it essentially works like Kies under the hood. Again, we assume that you’ve already used Smart Switch before and the data you’re trying to recover are saved in this app. Smart Switch also needs to be installed on your PC or Mac.

Although it’s generally a good idea to just simply restore everything from your backup, Smart Switch does allow you to only add back messages. This is an excellent option if you don’t plan on changing the general software landscape and merely want to get your old messages back. In Smart Switch, you can specifically restore Messages only (leaving the rest untouched). This means that you can get your messages only without the need to wipe the phone and return the rest to their previous state.

To restore text messages to your Galaxy phone using Smart Switch, follow these steps:

1. If you have an older Galaxy phone, you will need to install Samsung Smart Switch Mobile first. You can visit Google Play Store and install the app from there. This app already comes preinstalled on new Galaxy devices so you don’t need to add it again.

2. Once you have the app installed on your phone, connect your device to your computer via USB.

3. Unlock your Galaxy phone screen.

4. On your computer, launch Samsung Smart Switch.

5. Click on Select your backup data on Smart Switch.

6. By default, all options should have check marks on their respective boxes. Make sure to only check Messages. You can click on the box for Select all to uncheck everything. Then, click on the box for Messages again.

7. Double check the information at the boxes above Select all. Samsung device data should be shown on the left hand box, and the name of your phone or phone model should be at its opposite box. If you created multiple instances of backups before, make sure that you select the one you want based on the Date and time it was created.

8. When everything is set, you can then go ahead click OK.

9. Click on Restore now.

10. Wait for data transfer to be completed.

11. Click on OK.

12. That’s it!

Samsung Cloud

Another way to safely create a backup of your data is by using Samsung’s own cloud service called Samsung Cloud. If you created a Samsung account during the initial setup of your phone, you should already have a Samsung Cloud account as well. While its capacity is not as big as that of Smart Switch, which depends on the amount of hard drive space on a computer, Samsung only offers a free 15GB. You can use this free service to backup photos, videos, apps, contacts, data, among others. If money is not an issue and you need more, you can also avail of additional space by subscribing to their storage plans.

If you enabled Samsung Cloud during the initial setup and your phone syncs your data to it on its own, you may be able recover your deleted messages from there. This depends of course whether or not your phone synced to the cloud recently. To see if you can get back your messages from the cloud, follow these steps:

1. Samsung Cloud can be accessed under your phone’s Settings menu so on your Galaxy device, open Settings.

2. Tap on Cloud and accounts.

3. Tap Backup and restore.

4. Tap Restore data.

5. Select Messages.

6. Follow the rest of the instructions.

Keep in mind that the new data which are saved on the phone before the data of the backup will be deleted if you do this. Make sure to back them up ahead of time.

 

Method 2: Recover deleted text messages using third party services

If you have not created a backup of your data or messages using official means, there’s a 50-50 chance that you can get them back. In some cases, using highly specialised but proprietary third party programs or apps may be able to scan the storage device and recover something. If the data or messages you’re trying to recover are of great importance to you, you can consider getting help from professionals. Try to search for local shops in your area that may be able to provide the service you want.

Alternatively, you can also try to use programs that you can install on your computer. Such applications don’t usually come free and they’re not guaranteed to work. You can use Google to look for them.