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MacKenzie999

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 24, 2002
249
21
Boston
Hello…I’m just wondering if there’s any way to retrieve iMessages from 2-3 years ago. I have made occasional backups of my iPhone but I’m not sure how to proceed from there or if that’s even the answer.
 

BlackBun

Suspended
Oct 20, 2020
248
842
Wokingham U.K.
I asked this of myself. With iOS 16 I see you can now retrieve deleted messages from the app but they will be gone permanently after 40 days.
I wanted messages a year old and I understand even with regular back ups, they’re gone forever. I got that info via Google searches iPhone messages specifically.
I looked into these lost data retrieval software specialists but I couldn’t find one capable although I did retrieve some very old email addresses, photos, music, word and excel documents which I thought I’d lost preTimeMachine.
 

Artemis70

macrumors 6502
Feb 1, 2013
299
314
If you have set your Messages to be kept permanently (this is a setting on your iPhone), they should still be there. If you have set your iPhone to keep messages for 1 year or 30 days, they are gone. I'm not aware of a method to recover the messages from backups.
 
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