Android: How to Recover Deleted Photos

Accidentally deleting photos from your phone can be a pain. Not only does it mean you could lose a valuable memory (or that favourite bathroom selfie of yours) but it can also cost you time and effort to retake it, if you can.

Thankfully, there are a few options that can help you get your photos back. They won’t always work, but they can give you a fighting chance to save that all-important image!

1. Cancel/Undo

Depending on what device and software generation you use, you should have the option of quickly tapping a Cancel or Undo button after deleting your image. This button will only be available for a split-second, but try to tap it to avoid having to go to further steps to recover your image.

2. Restoring it from the Recycling Bin

Assuming you use the standard Android Gallery, you’ll find that instead of deleting them straight away, Android transfers your images to a Recycling Bin first. It’s relatively easy to recover images from there, as long as not too much time has passed.

Simply tap the three dots in the top right corner when you’re in your main Gallery view, and you’ll find the option Recycling Bin at the bottom of the pop-up menu. Click it and your recently deleted images will be there.

After a certain amount of time, however, Android will permanently delete them and you won’t be able to get them back this way. This could be 15, 30 or even 60 days – normally, that should be plenty of time to get your image back.

Should you want to permanently get rid of images in your Recycling Bin, you can delete them from there without waiting for the time period to pass, but be aware that once you do that, they will be gone for good!

3. Using Google’s Backups

If you back your pictures up to your Google account, you can retrieve deleted ones via the Google Photos app. Here too you have the option of looking through your trash can if you deleted pictures in the app – if you simply want a copy of one that was removed from your phone after being backed up to the drive, all you need to do is locate the relevant folder and download a copy of the image there to your phone.

You can do this as often as you’d like – as long as you don’t delete the photos from your Google Drive, you can restore them whenever and wherever you’d like, without any time limit on them.

Just be sure never to misplace your login info!