How to recover photos from your phone after they are deleted by mistake
1. Check the recycle bin function of your phone's photo album
Most phone photo album apps have a built-in "Recently Deleted" or similar recycle bin feature. When you delete a photo, the album doesn't immediately erase it from your storage, but moves it to the trash for a while. This provides users with the opportunity of "regret medicine" to get the photos back within a certain period of time after deletion.
The recycle bin function may be called differently for different phone brands and photo album apps, but the principle is the same. Take Samsung phone as an example, tap "Album" -> "Recently Deleted" in the Albums app to see the list of recently deleted photos. Select the photos you need to recover and click the "Recover" button to move them back to the album.
For Xiaomi phones, there is also a "Recently Deleted" option in the "Albums" of the Albums app. After opening, you can see the thumbnail preview of the deleted photos, after selecting the photos that need to be recovered, click the "Recover" button at the bottom.
Recycle Bin is the easiest and most straightforward way to recover photos, without the need for any software or cloud services, and is very easy to use. But it should be noted that the recycle bin only keeps deleted photos temporarily, and the retention time may vary from a few days to a few weeks for different phone brands. If you miss this time window, the photos will be deleted completely, and you need to look for other ways to recover them.
2. Restore with cloud backup
If you have turned on your phone's cloud backup feature, such as Samsung Cloud, Google Photos, iCloud, etc., the deleted photos may have been synced to the cloud. At this point, you can log in to the corresponding cloud service website or app to view and download the photos you need.
Take Google Photos as an example, open the photos.google.com website and log in to your Google account, click on the "Photos" tab on the left, and you can see all the pictures and video files backed up on Google Photos. Find the photos you want to recover, select them and click the download button to save them to your computer.
If you're using an iPhone and turn on iCloud Photo Stream, deleted photos will also be backed up to iCloud. Log in to the icloud.com website, go to the Photos app, and you'll see all the photos you've backed up. Select the photos you want to recover and click Cloud Download to save them to your computer or other devices.
The advantage of using cloud backup to restore photos is that even if the photos in your phone's storage have been completely deleted, you can download them back anytime and anywhere as long as there is a backup in the cloud. The disadvantage is that you need to turn on the cloud backup feature in advance and make sure that the photos have been synced and backed up successfully, otherwise this way will not be able to recover the lost photos.
3. Use data recovery software
If the above two ways can't get back the photos you need, then you can try to use a professional data recovery software to get back the deleted photos data by deep scanning the phone storage.
Common data recovery software includes DataFrog Android Recovery Expert, DiskGenius, EaseUS MobiSaver, etc. They work so that even if you delete the photos on your phone, as long as the data in the storage space is not overwritten by new files, the data of the photos will still remain there, but the system will no longer be able to recognize and display them. The data recovery software can scan the entire storage space to identify and extract these residual photo data.
The basic steps to use data recovery software are as follows:
Download and install the data recovery software to your computer
Connect your phone to your computer with a data cable
Select the phone storage device (internal storage or SD card) in the software to scan
Wait for the scan to finish and preview the found photo files
Select the photos you want to recover and save them to a folder on your computer
Take DiskGenius as an example, after opening the software, select the "File Recovery" function, check the phone storage device that needs to be scanned, and click "Start Scan". The scanning process may take some time, and once it is done, you can preview the found files. Find the photos you want to recover in the preview window, check them and click the "Recover" button, and select the save path to restore the photos to your computer.
Using data recovery software can get back deleted photos to the fullest, but there are some things to pay attention to. If you find that your photos are lost, you should take recovery measures as soon as possible to prevent new data from being written to the storage space and overwriting the remaining photo data. During the recovery process, don't keep taking photos or storing new files on your phone to prevent overwriting. Finally, before using data recovery software, it is best to back up the existing data of your phone to prevent accidents.
Precautions
No matter what method you take to recover phone photos, there are some general considerations to follow:
Once you find out that your photos are lost, take recovery measures as soon as possible and don't delay time. Because the phone's storage space is limited, new data is constantly being written, which is likely to overwrite the residual data of the deleted photos, resulting in irreversible.
During the process of recovering photos, do not take photos or store new files on your phone for the time being, so as not to overwrite the original data with new data.
Before using data recovery software, it is best to back up the existing data of your phone to prevent the software from running abnormally or other unexpected situations that may cause the loss of existing data.
After recovering the photos, transfer them to your computer or other secure storage devices in time to avoid being automatically deleted by the system due to insufficient storage space on your phone.
Establish good data backup habits and regularly synchronize important photos to the cloud or other storage media to prevent accidental loss of mobile phone data.