So, my iPhone 13 was stolen on my birthday while I was in Las Vegas, which was a bummer! I managed to get to a store today to replace it with an iPhone 16 Pro, but in the chaos, I lost a lot of messages from the last few days. I had messages synced to iCloud, but when I logged into my new phone, I didn't see any of my iMessages from my birthday or the days following. I also saw a few texts from non-iPhone users before restoring my backup, but now they're gone. I'm looking for advice on these three things: 1) Is there a way to recover the non-iMessages I lost? 2) How do I get my missing iMessages back? Do I need to restore my iCloud backup for that? 3) Lastly, what's the best way to set up my devices to ensure I don't lose messages next time? I just bought an iPad as well, so any tips for seamless syncing would be great!
2 Answers
You should try restoring from iCloud. Any messages received before your last backup should appear. However, anything after that won't be recoverable because the backup only includes what was on your device at that time. So if you received birthday texts after that backup, unfortunately, they're gone now.
Thanks! I was just hoping to see those iMessages somewhere since some friends said they could retrieve theirs even when their phone was lost.
Make sure you have iCloud Messages turned on. This way, your messages are stored in the cloud, and you won't lose them when switching devices. Just keep in mind that you might need to pay for extra storage as your message history grows.
I thought I had that on already. It's weird since I don’t see the iMessages from my birthday or the next days after losing my phone. My friend is able to find hers even on her lost phone.
Check that iCloud Messages is indeed active in your settings. It's possible they weren’t syncing for some reason.
That makes sense, but if iMessages were sent as regular texts after a failed iMessage send, those wouldn’t come back either.