iPhone Delete Text Messages on Its Own – Why & How to Fix

Q: Some of my iPhone text messages disappeared from inbox recently, but I’m sure that I didn’t delete them. That’s strange! Why is my iPhone deleting text messages on its own? How can I get these deleted text messages back? What’s worse, I haven’t back up my iPhone at anywhere.

—A user from Reddit

As an iPhone user, you may aware that there is no option for users to delete all the text messages on iPhone at once. However, you may not know that iPhone Message also has an auto-delete function that makes iPhone keep deleting messages automatically. For instance, if your message history setting is set to keep the message for 1 year. Then after 1 year, your iPhone messages get deleted by itself. But, that may not be the whole reason.

Why Is My iPhone Deleting Text Messages

Besides the reason of message history setting, more other reasons also may cause the loss of iPhone text messages. Such as:

1. New iOS version update, like the iOS 11, 11.2, 11.3 etc.
2. Downgrade from high iOS to lower version.
3. Jailbreaking iPhone.
4. Restore iPhone from iTunes or iCloud backup.
5. Syncing iPhone in iTunes.
6. More other reasons …

Tips to Fix iPhone Delete Text Messages on Its Own

All the above causes may lead to your iPhone text messages disappear from inbox. Following are some useful tips for you to prevent iPhone from deleting messages by itself.

Tip 1: Turn Off the Auto-delete feature on your iPhone. Just go to Settings > Messages > Keep Messages > Forever.

Tip 2: Before update & downgrade, make a full backup of your iPhone files, not only messages but also photos, contacts, videos, etc.

Tip 3: Since restoring from backup and syncing with iTunes will wipe current data on your iPhone, you can try to use an iTunes alternative to do smart restore and sync.

If you lose some important messages and want to get them back as soon as possible, let’s read on.

3 Steps to Retrieve Deleted Text Messages from iPhone (Even without Backup)

You know that you can restore deleted data from backup with iTunes or iCloud, but as mentioned above, this method will cause new data loss on your iPhone. What’s worst, you might don’t back up your iPhone data in advance at all. So, you need a tool to recover deleted text messages from iPhone directly (without backup), and won’t cause new data loss. Then, an award-winning iPhone data recovery – PhoneRescue for iOS is what you’re looking for.

It’s 100% safe and efficient, you can recover deleted iPhone text messages with only 3 simple steps. Now, let’s see how to make it.

Step 1 Download and install PhoneRescue for iOS on your Mac or PC computer > Connect your iPhone to the computer > Select Recover from iOS Device.

Step 2 All categories will be selected by default. Please uncheck Select All option and only tick Messages, then click on OK to proceed.

Step 3 Preview and select the text messages you want to recover, then click on the To Device button to put them back to your iPhone directly. Also, you can choose to export messages to the computer as TXT for printing or other uses.

The Bottom Line

After reading this guide, believe that you already clear about why iPhone deleting text messages on its own and how to fix it with ease. Meanwhile, as you can see from above, if you want to retrieve the lost messages, PhoneRescue for iOS is a reliable and easy way for you. Just download it to recover deleted text messages now >