Most deleted iPhone photos aren’t gone yet. Open Photos, scroll to Utilities, and tap Recently Deleted. Unlock the album with Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode, pick the photos, and tap Recover. They go straight back into your library in their original spot by date.
Deleted photos and videos stay in Recently Deleted for 30 days. After that, or if you emptied the album, the only way back is another copy: iCloud.com, a computer or cloud service you synced to, or an older iPhone backup. Nothing on the iPhone itself can pull a permanently deleted photo out of thin air.
How to recover recently deleted photos on iPhone
- Open the Photos app.
- Scroll down to the Utilities section. In iOS 26 and later it’s under the Collections view; on iOS 18 it’s near the bottom of the single Photos screen.
- Tap Recently Deleted.
- Tap View Album and unlock with Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode. The album is locked by default on iOS 16 and later.
- Tap Select in the top-right corner, then tap each photo or video you want back. A blue check mark appears on each one.
- Tap Recover. On newer iOS versions it may sit behind the More button (three dots) at the bottom of the screen.
- Confirm by tapping Recover again, for example Recover 2 Photos.
The photos disappear from Recently Deleted and return to your main library. They keep their original date, so look for them where they were taken in the timeline, not at the very bottom with today’s shots. To restore a single photo, you can also just open it in Recently Deleted and tap Recover.
Each thumbnail in the album shows how many days are left before it’s removed for good, so start with the oldest items if you’re pressed for time.
Photo still missing after recovering?
Check the Hidden album in Utilities too. Hidden photos don’t show in your library, which can look a lot like deletion. Our guide to finding hidden photos on iPhone covers how to unhide them. You can also type a place, a person’s name or an object like “dog” into the Photos search field.
Recover deleted photos from iCloud.com
If you use iCloud Photos, your deletions sync to iCloud, and so does the Recently Deleted album. That gives you a second way in, which helps when your iPhone is lost, broken or being set up.
- On a computer or tablet, go to icloud.com/photos and sign in with the same Apple Account your iPhone uses.
- Choose Recently Deleted in the sidebar.
- Select the photos and videos you want back.
- Choose Recover.
The recovered items sync back to your iPhone as long as iCloud Photos is still on there. iCloud.com follows the same 30-day limit, according to Apple’s iCloud guide.
Can you recover permanently deleted photos from an iPhone?
Only if a copy exists somewhere else. Once a photo leaves Recently Deleted, the Photos app and iCloud can’t bring it back. Work through these places, easiest first:
| Where to look | When it can help | Downside |
|---|---|---|
| Other photo apps, such as Google Photos, OneDrive, Dropbox or Amazon Photos | You had automatic backup turned on in that app | None; check each app’s own trash or bin as well |
| Messages, email and shared albums | You sent the photo to someone or added it to a shared album | Shared copies may be lower resolution |
| A Mac or PC you imported photos to | You ever copied photos off the iPhone with a cable | Only has photos up to the last import |
| A computer backup made in Finder or the Apple Devices app | The backup was made before you deleted the photo | Restoring replaces everything on the iPhone with the backup’s contents |
| An iCloud Backup | iCloud Photos was off and the backup is older than the deletion | You have to erase the iPhone first, and you lose anything newer than the backup |
Why an iCloud Backup often doesn’t have your photos
When iCloud Photos is on, your pictures sync to iCloud and are left out of the daily iCloud Backup, as Apple’s iCloud Backup page explains. If you use iCloud Photos, a photo that’s gone from Recently Deleted on iCloud.com isn’t sitting in an old backup either, so restoring one won’t help.
Restoring from a backup to get photos back
Warning: Restoring a backup replaces what’s on your iPhone now, including photos, messages and app data added since that backup. Before you try it, save anything new to a computer or cloud service.
- Make sure you have a backup from before the photo was deleted. On a computer, open Finder (Mac) or the Apple Devices app (Windows), select the iPhone, and look at the latest backup date.
- For a computer backup, connect the iPhone with a cable, select it, choose Restore Backup, pick the backup by date, and click Restore.
- For an iCloud Backup, go to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Erase All Content and Settings. During setup, choose From iCloud Backup on the Transfer Your Apps & Data screen and pick a backup from before the deletion.
If the photo isn’t in the restored library, it wasn’t in that backup. You can restore your most recent backup afterward to get back to where you started, which is why a recent iCloud backup of your iPhone is worth having before you experiment.
What about photo recovery software?
Many paid desktop tools promise to recover permanently deleted iPhone photos. In practice, they mostly scan the same backups you can restore yourself, and iPhone storage is encrypted, so they can’t dig deleted files out of the phone the way recovery tools sometimes can on a memory card. Be wary of any app that asks for payment before it shows you which of your photos it actually found.
Why did my photos disappear from other devices too?
With iCloud Photos on, deleting a photo on your iPhone deletes it on your iPad, Mac and iCloud.com as well, and recovering it on one device brings it back everywhere. If you want to clear space on your iPhone without losing photos elsewhere, that’s the setting to understand first.
Shared albums work differently. The person who created a shared album can delete anything in it, while subscribers can delete only what they added. A photo removed from a shared album isn’t removed from the contributor’s own library.
How to stop losing photos next time
- Keep iCloud Photos or another photo backup service turned on, so every picture exists in more than one place.
- Before you empty Recently Deleted to free up space, scroll through it once.
- If you share your iPhone with a child, hiding and locking private albums lowers the odds of photos being deleted by accident.
Matthew Roberts is the founder and editor of ARS Digitech. He started the site to answer the iPhone questions his friends and family kept asking him, and it has grown into a library of iPhone and iOS how-to guides. Matthew writes and maintains every tutorial on the site, checking steps and menu names against Apple’s official support documentation and updating guides when an iOS release moves a setting.