WhatsApp is the most popular instant messaging service and is used by millions to communicate with friends, family, and even business partners. Messages exchanged on WhatsApp can be very important, especially those for professional purposes. That is why you may want to recover messages that were deleted on WhatsApp.
There are two situations you could be in when you want to see deleted WhatsApp messages. The first is to see messages that you sent to another person or someone sent to you, but you delete them for yourself (using the feature Delete For Me). The second scenario is to see a message that you deleted or someone else sent and deleted it for everyone (using the feature Delete For Everyone). This article will show you how you can see deleted WhatsApp messages regardless of the situation.
Part 1: See WhatsApp Messages Deleted for Yourself without any App
If the WhatsApp messages were deleted for yourself, that means the other person can still see them. If you are in a group chat, the deleted messages are still on the other people’s phone. You can try the solutions below to get them back.
The solution work for both iPhone and Android users. It is to ask the other person to screenshot the messages and send them to you. This way, you will be able to view the messages as they appear in the chat. However, if there are lots of messages, then you can ask the person you were chatting with or any other person in the group chat to export the chat history via email and send it to you.
To do this on an Android phone:
- Open the chat and tap on the vertical ellipses.
- Click More.
- Choose “Export chat” in this menu and then pick with or without media depending on the messages you want to see.
- Pick the email client and then ask the other person to send the email to you.
On iPhone, open the chat and click the contact, then you will see the Export Chat option. The other steps are similar to what to do on Android phones.
You can then open the email and open the text file attached to the email. This will allow you to read the deleted messages in a text file format.
Part 2: See WhatsApp Messages Deleted for Everyone without any App
Whilst it is difficult to see messages that have been deleted for everyone, there are 2 ways you could view the message. The first solution works for both Android and iPhone. You can even try this method when you want to see the messages you deleted for yourself. The second solution is only possible on some Android devices.
Solution 1) Restore Delete WhatsApp Messages from a Previous Backup
The first you can take to see messages deleted for everyone is to restore your WhatsApp from a backup. WhatsApp has a built-in backup feature that can be set up to automatically back up your chats (Google Drive on Android and iCloud on iOS). If you have a backup of your WhatsApp chats before the messages you want to see were deleted, you can restore them from this backup and view those messages. The method of restoring from a backup for WhatsApp varies on Android and iOS so the steps for each operating system have been listed separately.
Android:
- Uninstall WhatsApp from your Android phone and then reinstall it from the Google Play Store.
- Open WhatsApp and enter your phone number.
- Verify your details and your account. Then you will be offered an option to restore a backup on Google Drive.
- Click “Restore” when automatically prompted to do so.
- Wait for WhatsApp to restore from the backup and view the message you would like to.
iOS:
- Uninstall and reinstall WhatsApp on your iPhone.
- Open WhatsApp and enter your details until you are prompted to restore from an iCloud backup.
- Click Restore Chat History and wait for WhatsApp restore from the iCloud backup.
If this method did not work, either because the backup was too recent or if you did not have a backup, then proceed to the next step.
Solution 2) Check WhatsApp Notification History
This method only works for some Android devices and will only work if the message has been sent recently (within a few hours). If you would like to try, follow the steps below.
- Go to your Android phone’s home screen and hold until you are presented with the “Widget” option.
- Scroll down to “Settings” and pick the widget which says “Settings shortcut”.
- Drop this widget on your home screen. You will be shown a list of the shortcuts this widget can let you access.
- Pick “Notifications”.
- Tap on the widget and then pick “Notification history”. This will only work if you have enabled notification history.
- Expand the WhatsApp notifications and find the message that was deleted.
Conclusion
We hope this article has allowed you to view the deleted WhatsApp messages you wanted to. Unfortunately, it is difficult to view deleted WhatsApp messages especially if the other person has deleted them for everyone. This is a security feature introduced by WhatsApp and therefore there isn’t an easy way to reverse this.
