WhatsApp is the world’s most popular chat platform, boasting more than 1.5 billion regular users. Instead of archiving a WhatsApp chat, you decide to delete it. Archived chats can be recovered very easily within WhatsApp, while recovering deleted messages is not as easy. Here, Express.co.uk shows how to recover deleted WhatsApp messages on your iPhone or Android.
Understanding WhatsApp chat backups:
In order to retrieve deleted WhatsApp messages, you need to enable Chat Backup in Settings.
WhatsApp offers several backup frequencies in Under Auto Backup: Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Off.
Remember, WhatsApp will only retain the most recent backup file in iOS and the two latest backup files in Android.
These daily auto backups make it easy to recover messages soon after deletion.
Weekly auto backups allow you to go further back in time to recover deleted WhatsApp messages from less than seven days ago at the expense of losing recent chat messages.
Simply select the WhatsApp auto backup frequency that best suits your needs.
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How to restore archived WhatsApp messages:
If your WhatsApp chats were archived, iOS users can reverse the archival by giving your iPhone a shake and choose Undo to recover the archived chat.
Even if the chat was archived a while ago, you can still recover them.
In iOS: Scroll up in the chat list until Archived Chats appears.
Tap on it, then swipe left on the chat to restore. Tap Unarchive.
In Android: Tap on Archived chats at the bottom of the chat list.
Tap and hold on the chat you would like to recover. Tap on the Unarchive icon.
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How to retrieve deleted WhatsApp messages:
Simply uninstall and reinstall WhatsApp. When you reinstall the app, you will be prompted to restore your message history from the backup file.
Select Restore and everything from the latest backup will be restored.
This method of recovering deleted WhatsApp messages works on both Android and iOS but it has to be within your selected auto backup frequency.
Therefore if your auto backup frequency is set to daily, then you can easily recover any deleted chats before the next backup occurs.
How to recover older deleted WhatsApp chats in Android:
Getting deleted messages back after a backup has run is slightly more difficult.
It will depend on your selected auto backup frequency and will only work on Android devices.
Open File Explorer on your device and navigate to WhatsApp and Databases.
Rename msgstore.db.crytp12 to msgstore-latest.db.crytp12
Rename msgstore-YYYY-MM-DD.1.db.crypt12 to msgstore.db.crytp12
If Google Drive backups is enabled, open Google Drive, tap on Backups, delete the WhatsApp backup file
Uninstall and reinstall WhatsApp, then when prompted, restore from the backup file.