If texts from a single person have disappeared on your iPhone, you can check if they’ve been deleted, see if you have the person blocked, restart or update your phone, restore from an iCloud backup, or use some kind of data recovery software to bring it back.
While I do many different things on my iPhone, there are few things I do more than text. Texting is great to stay in touch with friends and family, and keeping the conversations around can be great to refer back to past information if need be.
But what happens if a single text conversation randomly disappears? And how can you bring the conversation back? Keep reading to learn more.
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Key Takeaways
- The most likely reasons for these text messages disappearing from a single person are that the conversation has been accidentally deleted, or the individual is blocked on your device.
- You can also restart or update your device to see if that brings the messages back. The reason these may work is because updating or restarting can correct some bugs or internal issues that lead to problems like missing features and plenty of others.
- If that doesn’t work, you can try to restore from a backup you have previously created. If you don’t have a backup, or the backup doesn’t work, you can try a data recovery tool.
1. Check if They Were Accidentally Deleted
The first place to check for the missing text conversation is in your recently deleted messages folder. You can access this folder by going to your Message app, pressing Edit on the top left, and then choosing Show Recently Deleted from the dropdown menu.
On the following page, you’ll see a list of your recently deleted conversations. Simply scan through the list and see if you can find the missing messages. If you find the conversation and want to bring it back, simply check the box and click Recover.
Message conversations will only remain in this folder for a short period of time, so make sure to act quickly. Also, your Message History setting could be to blame for messages mysteriously going missing.
This is a feature that lets you automatically delete messages if enough time passes. It can be helpful for saving space and getting rid of old messages you don’t need, but can also unfortunately delete important information at the same time.
To access/change this setting, go to Settings > Messages > Keep Messages and choose to keep them forever, for 1 year, or for 30 days.
While this may not help you save messages that have already been deleted due to this feature, it can help you prevent it from occurring in the future.
2. See if You Accidentally Blocked the Person
Another thing that could explain texts from only one person disappearing is that you accidentally blocked them. If you block someone, you won’t receive messages, calls, emails or FaceTimes from them.
To check who you’ve blocked, go to Settings > Messages > Blocked Contacts. If you see them on this list, simply swipe left on their name or number and press Unblock.
3. Restart Your iPhone
Restarting your iPhone is another quick and easy way to try to restore the lost text messages. On the iPhone X and newer, this is done by holding down both the volume down and power buttons until a power-off slider appears.
Next, just slide to the right to turn off the device. Leave it alone for around 30 seconds, and then press and hold the side power button until the Apple logo appears, and the phone will turn back on.
On older devices, you only need to hold down the power button to bring up the power-off slider, but the rest of the steps stay the same.
The reason that restarting your phone can often fix issues like this is because it refreshes the system memory and lets it work from a clean slate. This ends processes and programs and can deal with any strange issues or background interactions that were taking place.
4. Update Your iOS
If you are running an outdated version of iOS, it isn’t uncommon to experience strange glitches and bugs such as this one. New updates often introduce bug fixes and issue corrections that can fix these problems instantly, so don’t hesitate to update your iPhone if you are struggling.
In order to perform an update, go to Settings > General > Software Update. If an update is available, click Download and Install to begin the updating process. In most cases, an update should only take a few minutes to complete.
5. Restore from a Backup
If you have an iCloud backup, you can use this to take your device back to a time when the messages were still on your phone. In order to restore from a backup, you first need to erase the current contents of your device and start from scratch.
In order to do this, you need to go to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone, and then choose Erase all Content and Settings. After you confirm it, a progress bar will appear and you need to wait for it to finish before you can continue.
Once the iPhone restarts, follow the on-screen instructions until you get to the Transfer Your Apps & Data screen, and then tap to restore from the iCloud Backup. Make sure to choose the correct backup from the list and wait for the process to finish.
However, keep in mind that restoring from a backup will result in the loss of data that was created after the time of the backup. So be careful that you don’t accidentally lose a ton of important information trying to save a single text conversation.
6. Use Data Recovery Software
If nothing else has worked so far, you can enlist the help of a piece of iPhone data recovery software to see if it can bring the conversation back. These are able to access parts of your device that you can’t, and can identify and restore data from places that would normally be unreachable.
There are several options on the market, and make sure to do some research to ensure you choose the right one. You should go with one that has good reviews and a solid reputation and one that includes all the features you want/need.
The step-by-step process of how the software works varies from one tool to the next, but most work in a similar way. After downloading the software, you need to connect your phone to the computer.
Next, run the software and it will work to recover the data on the device and when it’s done, you will be able to search through the results and find the lost conversation. You should do this quickly, as waiting too long could lead to data being overwritten, and thus unrecoverable.
Final Thoughts
If text messages from one person have randomly disappeared from your device, it can be confusing and you may be left wondering why it has happened, and how you can fix it.
I hope the information provided in this guide has been able to help show you how the issue can occur, and the things you can do to try and correct it.
Which of these methods helped you get your important text messages back? Let me know in a comment below.
