Photos and video
Deleted photos are usually still there.
Right up until something writes over them. That is the whole game, and it is why what you do in the next hour matters more than what we do in the next week.
Check these first. They cost nothing.
A good share of the people who ask us about deleted photos still have them, and get them back in two minutes without paying anyone. Work through this before you go any further.
iPhone and iPad
- Photos app, then Albums, scroll to the bottom, Recently Deleted. Items stay there for 30 days. If your phone is recent, that album may be locked behind Face ID, which is why people miss it.
- Check iCloud Photos on another device or at icloud.com. If the photo synced before you deleted it, deleting on one device may still leave a copy in a shared album or a saved message thread.
- Look in your last iTunes or Finder backup on a computer. An old backup nobody remembers making is one of the more common happy endings.
Android
- Google Photos, Library, Bin. Items stay 60 days. Photos never backed up are only in the device bin, which holds them 30 days.
- Samsung Gallery has its own separate Recycle Bin. So do several manufacturer galleries. Emptying one does not empty the other.
- Check whether the photos were on an SD card rather than the phone. If so, take the card out now and stop using it.
What “permanently deleted” actually means
It means removed from the list the app shows you. The storage underneath is a separate thing. When a file is deleted, the directory entry that says “this photo lives at these locations” is cleared and those locations are marked available. The photo itself is untouched until the device needs that space for something else.
So recovery is not magic and it is not guesswork. It is reading the storage directly, below the filesystem that has forgotten the photo, and identifying images by their own structure rather than by a directory that no longer lists them. That works on camera cards, on phone storage, and on drives.
When it stops working
Overwritten is gone. If the device has reused those locations, the photo is not hidden, it is replaced. Nobody recovers it, and anybody who says they can is selling something.
Modern SSDs and some phone storage erase deleted data themselves. A background process reclaims the space for write performance, often within minutes, whether or not you do anything. This is why an SSD is a harder case than a hard drive and why speed matters more there.
A dead iPhone is usually final. Storage is encrypted against keys in the processor. If the board is dead, the keys are gone. We say this on every page it is relevant to, because customers are routinely told otherwise.
When it is worth a lab
The free checks came up empty, the device will not start, the card reports itself as unformatted, the photos were on a drive that now clicks, or the images matter enough that guessing is not acceptable. That is the point to stop and have it assessed properly, which costs nothing here and ends with a straight answer about what is actually recoverable.
Common questions
Are permanently deleted photos really gone?
Usually not immediately. On a phone or a camera card, deleting removes the entry that points to the photo and marks the space reusable. The image data sits there until the device writes something else over it. 'Permanently deleted' in an app menu almost always means 'removed from this list', not 'erased from the storage'.
How long do I have?
There is no fixed window. It depends entirely on how much the device is used afterwards. A phone you keep taking photos on will overwrite the space quickly. A phone switched off within minutes of the loss can hold recoverable photos for years. Time matters less than writes.
Can you get photos back from a phone that won't turn on?
Often on Android, where the storage can be read directly even when the phone won't boot. Rarely on a modern iPhone with a dead logic board, because the encryption keys are fused into the processor and die with it. We will tell you which situation you are in before you spend anything.
Should I install recovery software?
Not onto the device holding the photos. Installing anything writes to that storage, and on a phone you cannot control where. If the photos matter, stop using the device and get it assessed. If they do not, the free checks below cost nothing and are safe.
Phone data recovery → · Memory cards and camera media →