How to Recover Deleted Photos From a Phone, Camera or Computer

Deleted the wrong photos, or cleared out an album you meant to keep? Before you pay for anything, know this: most people who want to recover deleted photos find them in a “Recently Deleted” folder or a cloud backup within a few minutes. Where to look depends on where the photos lived: a phone, a cloud service, a computer or a camera’s memory card. And if they’ve been permanently deleted from a modern phone, we’ll be straight with you about what that means.

How to recover deleted photos on a phone

Every major phone platform holds deleted photos in a recycle folder for a while before erasing them. Check here first.

iPhone

1. Open Photos and scroll down to Utilities (on older iOS versions, go to Albums → Utilities).
2. Tap Recently Deleted and unlock it with Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode.
3. Tap Select, choose your photos and tap Recover.

Photos stay in Recently Deleted for up to 30 days. Our iPhone photo recovery guide covers iCloud, backups and the other places iPhone photos hide.

Android with Google Photos

1. Open Google Photos and go to Collections (called Library in older versions).
2. Tap Trash (or Bin, depending on your region).
3. Touch and hold the photos you want, then tap Restore.

Google keeps items in Trash only for a limited time: currently up to 60 days for photos that were backed up, and typically 30 days for ones that weren’t. Don’t wait.

Samsung Gallery

1. Open Gallery and tap the menu icon (three lines).
2. Tap Recycle bin (some versions call it Trash).
3. Select the photos and tap Restore.

Samsung keeps deleted items in the Recycle bin for 30 days. Other Android brands’ gallery apps usually have a similar “Recently deleted” album in their menu.

Check every cloud service that might have a copy

If a photo was ever backed up, the cloud copy may still exist even though it’s gone from your phone. Sign in on a computer and check:

• iCloud Photos: at iCloud.com, open Photos and look in Recently Deleted. This is useful if the phone itself is lost or broken.
• Google Photos: at photos.google.com, check both your library and Trash. If you used “Free up space,” that removed only the copies on your phone; the backed-up copies are still in your account.
• OneDrive: camera uploads usually land in Pictures → Camera Roll. Deleted items go to the Recycle bin on onedrive.com.
• Dropbox: check the Camera Uploads folder and the Deleted files page. How long deleted files can be restored depends on your plan.
• Amazon Photos and others: if you ever installed a photo backup app, sign in and look.

Don’t forget photos you’ve shared. Pictures sent in messaging apps or posted to social media can often be downloaded again, though frequently at reduced quality.

Recover deleted photos from a computer

Photos deleted on a computer usually go to the Recycle Bin (Windows) or Trash (Mac) first. On a Mac, the Photos app also has its own Recently Deleted album. After that, check your backups: File History on Windows or Time Machine on a Mac. Our deleted file recovery guide walks through each step.

Recover deleted photos from a camera SD card

Cameras don’t have a trash folder. When you delete a photo on the camera, it’s gone from the camera’s view right away. Even so, this is often the most recoverable situation of all:

1. Stop shooting on that card. Every new photo can overwrite the deleted ones.
2. Don’t format the card, even if the camera suggests it.
3. Put the card in a card reader on your computer.
4. Run read-only recovery software that scans the card without writing to it. PhotoRec is a free, open-source option; there are commercial tools too.
5. Save recovered photos to your computer’s drive, never back onto the card.

Most cameras simply mark the space as free rather than erasing it, so deleted photos often stay on the card until new shots replace them. Results vary by camera and card, so there are no guarantees. See recovering deleted files from a USB drive or SD card for the details, and the needs-formatting guide if the card is now asking to be formatted.

Android phones with a memory card: if your photos were saved to a removable microSD card set up as portable storage, you can treat it like a camera card. If the card was set up as internal storage, it’s encrypted to that specific phone and can’t be read in another device.

Can you recover permanently deleted photos from a phone?

This is the question everyone hopes has a different answer. If you need to recover permanently deleted photos that were purged from Recently Deleted or Trash, and no copy exists in any cloud service or backup, here’s the honest picture:

• Modern iPhones and Android phones encrypt their internal storage. When a photo is permanently deleted, the key needed to read it is discarded, and the phone’s flash storage clears the old data as part of normal housekeeping.
• That means purged photos are generally not recoverable by anyone. Not by software, and not by a data recovery lab, including ours.
• Be skeptical of “phone recovery” software. Many of these programs mostly read your existing iCloud, Google or computer backups, which you can restore yourself for free. Read is data recovery software safe? before you buy anything.

Your best remaining options are copies that live somewhere else: an old phone in a drawer, an old computer you once synced to, a tablet signed into the same account, or a family member you sent the photos to.

When a lab can help

A lab can’t undo a permanent deletion on an encrypted phone, but it can often recover photos that are still there and simply unreachable:

• A phone that won’t turn on, has been dropped, or was water-damaged.
• A memory card or USB drive that isn’t detected or shows as 0 bytes.
• A camera card that’s cracked, bent or physically damaged.

If your phone is dead rather than wiped, see what to do when an iPhone won’t turn on.

The bottom line

To recover deleted photos, check the phone’s Recently Deleted or Recycle bin first, then every cloud service you’ve used, then your computer’s trash and backups. For camera cards, stop shooting and scan the card with read-only software. If photos were purged from a working modern phone and never backed up, they’re almost certainly gone, which is the best argument there is for an automatic backup.

If your photos are on a phone, memory card or drive that has physically failed, our photo recovery service can help. It’s one flat $1,200 price for a single device, with free prepaid shipping, and you pay nothing unless the recovery succeeds. What we can’t do is restore photos purged from a working, encrypted phone, and we’ll tell you that before you ship anything.