Losing important photos accidentally is far too common – maybe you were going for the Share button but instead, you accidentally tapped on the Delete button, or maybe you were getting rid of the clutter and you accidentally deleted some important photos in the process. In the worst-case scenario, your photos in the gallery were corrupted while you were transferring them to another device. Whatever the case may be, thankfully, your Android or iOS device offers a number of ways to recover permanently deleted photos. Here, we will look at multiple ways through which you can recover deleted photos from your gallery.
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There are two main ways to recover deleted images from the gallery on an Android device. The first one involves looking for deleted photos in the trash section of the gallery app or the file manager app. If this doesn’t work out, there is free and paid recovery software available on the Google Play Store as well as on Windows that you can use to recover files.
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If you have accidentally deleted photos on your Android device, the first thing you need to do is to look for a “Trash”, “Bin” or a “Recently Deleted” folder. Most gallery apps have a Recycle bin in place for this exact situation. However, the steps to access the folder could be different based on your device manufacturer. For instance, the system gallery app on OnePlus devices has a “Recently Deleted” folder under the Collections tab. To access it, you need to open the app, swipe right to get to the Collections tab and scroll down until you find the Recently Deleted option under Others. Here, you will have the option to recover or delete the photo forever.
Deleted photos or videos remain for 30 days on the OnePlus’ recently deleted folder before deleting themselves. This applies to nearly all the gallery apps out there. For instance, the Trash folder in the Xiaomi’s Gallery app also holds deleted photos for a maximum of 30 days. For Xiaomi devices, the folder is located in the Album section. Some file management apps such as Files Go from Google also have a Trash folder in place to recover deleted photos on Android. The trash folder is located in the Files Go menu on the left.
Similar to system gallery apps, Google Photos also features a trash folder where images and videos get stored after they have been deleted. Since Google Photos is one of the most popular gallery apps, it makes sense that one would want to know how to restore photos in the Google Photos app. To recover lost photos in the Google Photos app, follow these steps:
1. Open the Google Photos app.
2. Tap on Library in the bottom right.
3. Select the Trash option.
4. Select the photos that you wish to restore.
5. Tap on Restore.
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If you have accidentally removed photos from your device, they might be available on the cloud storage. Most cloud storage services have an auto-backup feature where all photos and other files are automatically backed up. If you are using Xiaomi cloud storage, for instance, you will find all the accidentally deleted photos in the cloud storage from where you can recover the files. If you use the Google Photos Backup, photos deleted from any third-party gallery app will remain in your Google cloud storage.
Another way you can recover deleted photos is by using a recovery app. Now, there are a ton of recovery apps out there. EaseUS data recovery and Dr. Fone are among the most popular. After you have lost the photos, simply connect your device to the PC via a USB cable. Open the recovery tool and follow the on-screen instructions.
Despite what the recovery software might claim, there is no guarantee that the tool will be able to recover your lost photos. Deleted files remain in your device storage for a short period of time before they are overwritten with new data. If you store files on a microSD card, you have a high chance of recovering the photos since you can stop the overwriting process by taking out the memory card.
Similar to Android, iPhones also offer a Recently Deleted folder in their in-house Photos app. Photos that you may have accidentally deleted will end up there and remain there for a period of 30 days. Following that, the photos and videos are automatically deleted.
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To recover the photos on your iPhone and iPad, here is what you need to do –
Apple users can recover deleted photos from the iCloud backup as well. This method is useful in cases where you cannot find the deleted photo in the Recently Deleted folder. However, it is not without its caveats. First, this approach will only work if you back up photos to the cloud. Secondly, the backup will replace all the data on your device with the data stored in the backup. If you have a fairly recent backup, then it won’t be an issue since you probably don’t have much new data to begin with.
If you do have tons of new data stored on your device after the last backup, what you can do is create a new backup. Once you manage to recover all the important photos and videos, send them to external storage and restore your device to the latest version of your iPhone backup. This way, you will not lose any of your latest data and will still manage to recover the deleted photos.
Now, to recover lost photos from a previous iCloud backup, here is what you need to do –
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