How to Recover Deleted Photos on Your Phone or Camera
06/17/2017
Techniques/ tips
If you have trigger happy fingers when it comes to cleaning out your photo albums on your phone or camera, there has likely been a time or two (or three, or four) when you have accidentally deleted an image you would have liked to keep. We’ve all been there, so below are a few quick tips to give yourself a shot at recovering your deleted images.
Pull the plug.
If you’re on your phone, disconnect from the Wi-Fi, turn on airplane mode, and put your phone to sleep. If you’re using your camera, turn it off and pull out the card. The reasoning is that if you act fast, you could actually halt the deletion process and prevent the device from overwriting the files.
Check your device.
If you’re an Android user, Google Photos has got your back. Open the app, click on the Menu button at the top left of the screen, and go to the trash. Press and hold the photo or video you want to recover and a restore button will appear at the top right. Click it. If you don’t have Google Photos on your Android, don’t panic, there are plenty of apps on the market–like DiskDigger–that can be downloaded from the Google Play store to help recover lost data from your device and SD card.
On an iPhone or iPad, recovering deleted photos is even easier. Open the photo app and go to your albums, where you will find a “Recently Deleted” folder.
If you were using a memory card, Recuva is a free photo recovery app for Windows 10, and PhotoRec is the Mac equivalent.
Consult the cloud.
In the unfortunate event that you can’t recover your photos directly on your device, check your computer to see if the images were backed up there. Many phones are programmed to automatically back up to iTunes, iCloud, or Google Photos, so there is a chance your priceless data was saved to your computer’s hard drive before you accidentally hit delete.
Prevention is the best medicine.
Sadly, there are times when once an image is gone, it is gone for good, so take the simple precaution of setting up your device to automatically back up to your computer from the get-go and avoid the potential of lost data altogether. You can also print your precious memories for a tactile backup that won’t be prone to a digital disaster.
Please see these additional links about backing up your photos:
