How to Recover Deleted Files from WhatsApp on Mobile?

WhatsApp is no doubt the leading messaging app for Smartphone users today. It is mainly popular for its ability to send and receive multimedia files such as video clips, mp3 files, voice recordings and pictures with friends and family members. The beauty of this app is that despite the many added benefits, it is free to use except that you’ve to pay your Service provider for using the Internet on your mobile phone. Currently, WhatsApp is available as a mobile app for all the popular mobile OS such as Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Windows and Symbian.

If you’re reading this article, Here is possible ways to retrieve the lost files or recover the deleted files from WhatsApp. Without much time wasting, let us get to the Method.

Recover Deleted/Lost Files from WhatsApp?

WhatsApp usually takes the backup of your data (files) and stores it on your memory card once every 24 hours. So, if you’ve deleted your data either accidentally or deliberately, you can easily get it back.

Method 1] Default Solution: Recover 7 Days Old WhatsApp Data

If you want to recover data which is less than 1 week old, then try to uninstall your WhatsApp mobile application and reinstall it. When you did so, you’ll be prompted to ‘Restore message history’. By selecting the ‘Restore’ option, all your 7 day old data will be retrieved from your memory card.

Unfortunately, you cannot retrieve data that is deleted more than a week ago using the default method. But don’t worry! There is an alternative solution.

Method 2] Software to Retrieve Deleted Files from WhatsApp

There is an awesome tool called ‘Recover Messages’ which can recover all your lost or deleted files or data easily. However, you’ll have to copy your WhatsApp database folder to your PC.

• To do so, simply connect your mobile to PC and go to ‘/sdcard/WhatsApp/Databases/msgstore.db.crypt’ and copy the file.
• The above location is for all devices except iOS. If you’re an iPhone user, then head over to ‘net.whatsapp.Whatsapp/Documents/ChatStorage.sqlite’ and copy the files.
• Tip: You can use bump to transfer files over the WiFi without having to connect your mobile device to the computer.
• Once you’ve done the copying, head over to the website ‘www.recovermessages.com’ > click the ‘Select SQLite File’ > Browse and attach the file that you’ve copied to your PC in the earlier steps.
• Next, checkmark the option ‘I agree the terms of use’ and click ‘Scan’ button.
• The process might take a while depending on the size of your WhatsApp database and the Internet speed. Once the scanning is completed, you’ll be provided with options to recover your lost data back.

Tip: It is suggested that the iPhone users should sync their mobiles to either iTunes or iCloud very often why because the retrieval success rate using the above method for iOS devices is pretty low. So, it is better to prevent rather than feeling sorry after the data is lost. Lucky for the Android users - there is a pretty good success rate of recovery lost data using the above process.

Before trying to attempt these steps, please keep in mind that if you’ve restored your deleted data, you’ll lose all your current chat history, messages which you’ve sent or received after a backup has been taken. So, please proceed accordingly.