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How to Recover Deleted Photos

The fastest way to recover deleted photos is the trash folder your phone or cloud account already keeps for you. Google Photos holds backed-up items for 60 days, the iPhone's Recently Deleted album holds them for 30, and Samsung's Gallery bin holds them for 30.

That path costs nothing and takes about two minutes. Everything below it — scanning apps, desktop software, recovery labs — exists for cases where those windows have already closed.

One thing worth knowing before installing anything: on a modern phone, free scanning apps are considerably weaker than their store listings suggest. Android 11 cut apps off from raw storage access, and iOS never allowed it in the first place. The table shows what each option actually delivers, and where the money starts.

What each option really does

Option What it's for Free? What the free version does Paid cost Android / iOS Needs a computer?
Google Photos Trash Anything synced to Google Photos Yes, fully Full restore, original resolution — Both No
iPhone Recently Deleted Photos deleted on iPhone or iPad Yes, fully Full restore, original resolution — iOS No
Samsung Gallery Bin Photos deleted from Samsung Gallery Yes, fully Full restore, original resolution — Android No
DiskDigger Scanning Android storage directly Free tier Finds JPG and PNG files, often only cached thumbnails Pro is a few dollars, one-time Android No
Disk Drill SD cards, computers and iPhone backups Free tier Scans and previews; recovers up to 100 MB on Windows $89/year or $149 lifetime Via computer Yes
Recuva Deleted files on a Windows PC Yes, unlimited Unlimited recovery, no size cap Optional Pro tier, roughly $20–25/year Via computer Yes, Windows only
PhotoRec Carving files off cards and drives Yes, fully Everything, with no limits or upsell — Via computer Yes

The first ten minutes matter more than the app you pick

Deleting a file doesn't erase it. The system marks that space as available and moves on, which is why recovery is possible at all, and why it stops being possible once something else gets written there.

  • Put the phone in airplane mode. Background sync, app updates, and message downloads all write to storage.
  • Don't take new photos or record video. Those are the largest writes a phone makes.
  • Don't install a recovery app onto the affected device yet. The install is itself a write.
  • If an SD card is involved, eject it now and scan it from a computer instead.
  • Check every trash folder before scanning anything: Gallery, Google Photos, OneDrive, Dropbox, Amazon Photos.
  • Confirm you're signed into the right account. Photos that look deleted are often sitting in a second Google account.
  • Don't factory reset. On both platforms a reset destroys the encryption keys and ends recovery permanently.

Which path fits your situation

Photos went missing in the last month or two, with backup switched on. Go straight to the trash folder. This covers most cases and costs nothing. Nothing else here applies.

The window closed, and the photos were on an Android phone. Realistically you have a free scan that may only return thumbnails, or a desktop tool if an SD card was involved. Results vary enough by Android version that it's worth reading the full walkthrough for recovering deleted photos on Android before installing anything.

The window closed, and the photos were on an iPhone. Your only real path runs through a backup, either iCloud or a local one on a Mac or PC. Apple's storage encryption means no app can scan the phone the way it scans a hard drive, and what actually works on iPhone is a narrower list than the ads suggest.

The seven options, in the order worth trying them

Google Photos Trash. The highest-yield place to look on either platform, since Google Photos runs on iPhones too. Free, no upsell. Backed-up photos and videos stay in the trash for 60 days; items never backed up stay for 30.

How to use:

  1. Open the Google Photos app and tap Library, or Collections on newer builds.
  2. Tap Trash, labeled Bin in some regions.
  3. Tap Select and choose the items you want.
  4. Tap Restore and confirm.
  5. Check your main library — restored items return to their original date, not to the top.

The counter starts at deletion, not at the moment you notice. Anything sitting at day 58 needs attention today.

iPhone Recently Deleted. Apple's built-in safety net, free and instant. Items stay in the album for 30 days, and after that they're permanently deleted with no way to get them back.

How to use:

  1. Open Photos and tap Collections at the bottom.
  2. Swipe up and tap Recently Deleted under Utilities.
  3. Tap View Album and authenticate with Face ID or Touch ID.
  4. Tap Select, choose your photos, then tap Recover.
  5. Confirm. Items return to your library across all signed-in devices.

If you emptied this album manually, the 30 days don't apply. Those items went immediately.

Samsung Gallery Recycle Bin. Separate from Google Photos and easy to overlook. Files deleted from Gallery are kept for 30 days before permanent deletion.

How to use:

  1. Open the Gallery app and tap the menu icon.
  2. Tap Recycle bin, labeled Trash in some regions.
  3. Press and hold the first photo you want back.
  4. Tap additional thumbnails, or tap All in the top-left corner.
  5. Tap Restore.

The caveat: the bin only holds what you deleted after the feature was switched on. If it was off, this folder will be empty.

DiskDigger. The most-installed Android scanning app, and the one whose limits are worth understanding before you tap Scan. Free, with a low-cost Pro upgrade on Google Play. On a device that isn't rooted, it can only recover lower-resolution versions of photos found in cache and thumbnail directories.

How to use:

  1. Install from Google Play and grant storage permission.
  2. Tap Start Basic Photo Scan.
  3. Let the scan finish, then sort results by size. Larger files are likelier to be originals.
  4. Tap a result to preview it at full size before recovering anything.
  5. Tap Recover and save to Google Drive or Dropbox, never back to the phone.

Set expectations: a 200 KB result that previews correctly is a thumbnail, not your original photo.

Disk Drill. The strongest desktop option for SD cards, camera media, and iPhone backups. The free version recovers up to 100 MB and previews unlimited files first. Pro runs $89 per year or $149 as a lifetime license, covering one user across up to three devices on macOS and Windows.

How to use:

  1. Download from CleverFiles and install it on a computer, not the affected device.
  2. Connect the card, camera, or phone and select it from the device list.
  3. Click Search for lost data and choose Universal Scan.
  4. Preview results and check the recovery-chance indicator before deciding.
  5. Recover to a different physical drive than the one you scanned.

For iPhone owners: direct iOS recovery is only supported in the Mac version, and it reads a backup rather than scanning the phone itself.

Recuva. The free Windows standby, best for photos deleted off a PC or a card reader. The free version has no size cap at all, which makes it the cheapest real option in the category.

How to use:

  1. Download Recuva and install it, ideally not onto the drive you're recovering from.
  2. In the wizard, choose Pictures as the file type.
  3. Point it at the specific drive, card, or folder.
  4. Enable Deep Scan if the first pass comes back thin.
  5. Recover to a separate drive.

The trade-off is coverage: Recuva reads file system pointers rather than file signatures, so it struggles on formatted or corrupted cards.

PhotoRec. Free, open source, genuinely unlimited, and the option nobody wants to use because the interface is a text console. It ignores the file system entirely and goes after the underlying data, so it still works on media whose file system was reformatted or badly damaged.

How to use:

  1. Download TestDisk & PhotoRec from CGSecurity and unzip it.
  2. Run qphotorec_win.exe for a basic graphical window, or photorec_win.exe for the console.
  3. Select the source drive or card.
  4. Restrict file types to JPG, PNG, and HEIC to cut scan time sharply.
  5. Choose an output folder on a different drive and start.

PhotoRec recovers files without their original names or folders, so you'll finish with thousands of numbered images to sort.

What no recovery app can do

Overwritten data doesn't come back. Recovery works because deletion only removes the pointer. Once new data occupies those blocks, no tool at any price reconstructs what was there.

Modern iPhones can't be scanned like a disk. iOS doesn't expose the phone as an ordinary drive, and hardware-backed encryption blocks traditional file carving, so legitimate tools work through backups, cloud records, or data still accessible on an unlocked device. After Erase All Content and Settings, Apple destroys the encryption keys in the Secure Enclave. The data may physically remain, but without those keys it's unreadable.

Android apps mostly find thumbnails now. From Android 11 onward, scoped storage blocked direct raw reads of the storage partition for non-rooted apps, which is the foundation of true sector-level recovery. What these apps surface on a modern unrooted phone is cached thumbnails, EXIF previews, and files still indexed by MediaStore.

Physical damage is a different trade. A phone that won't power on, a card that isn't detected, or a drive that clicks needs a lab with a cleanroom, not software. Labs quote per case; ask whether it's no-recovery-no-fee before shipping anything.

Real cost and realistic timelines

Free path: $0, two to three minutes, full-resolution originals. This resolves most cases.

Free scanning path: $0, 5 to 20 minutes. Expect thumbnails rather than originals on an unrooted phone.

Paid software path: roughly $20 to $149, plus one to three hours. Disk Drill is $89/year or $149 lifetime, Recuva's free tier is often enough, and PhotoRec costs nothing but demands patience. Run the free scan and preview before paying; every reputable tool shows you what it found first.

Cloud backup, so this doesn't repeat: in the US, Google One starts around $1.99/month for 100 GB and $2.99/month for 200 GB; iCloud+ starts at $0.99/month for 50 GB, with 200 GB at $2.99. Both auto-renew. Check the current tier list before subscribing, since both companies have reshuffled plans recently.

Common questions

Can photos be recovered after 60 days? Not from the Google Photos trash. That window is final. Recovery then depends on another copy existing somewhere: a second cloud service, a computer backup, a Google Takeout export, or an SD card that hasn't been reused.

Do free recovery apps actually work? For photos still in a trash folder, completely. For photos genuinely erased from a modern phone's internal storage, they mostly return cached thumbnails. That's an operating system limitation, not a paywall.

Does rooting an Android phone improve the odds? It unlocks deeper scanning, but it wipes the device on most modern models, voids the warranty, and can brick the phone. For photos specifically, it's rarely worth it.

Are photos deleted from an SD card easier to get back? Considerably. A card can be removed and read as an ordinary storage device, which sidesteps every phone-side restriction. Stop using it and scan it from a computer.

Before you go looking

The uncomfortable part about how to recover deleted photos is that the outcome was mostly decided before the deletion happened, by whether backup was running. Everything after that is damage control with declining odds. So what's currently syncing on your phone, and when did you last confirm it's actually working?

Sources and tools mentioned