What actually happens when I back up my iPhone to iCloud? I'm trying to recover messages that were in Recently Deleted for only a couple of days, but part of that folder suddenly disappeared. Since my last iCloud backup failed, I'm wondering whether another backup could restore the missing conversations. I'm also not sure whether Messages in iCloud was enabled on my phone.
1 Answer
An iCloud device backup generally won’t restore messages if Messages in iCloud was enabled, because those conversations are synced separately rather than stored in the regular backup. The same applies to other data already synced through iCloud. Since your most recent backup failed, there may not be a usable backup from before the messages disappeared anyway. Check whether Messages in iCloud is enabled on your Apple devices and whether the messages appear on another device, but a backup is unlikely to recover them if they were permanently removed from the synced message history.
Is there any other way to recover them? They had only been in Recently Deleted for about two days, so I’m confused about why part of the folder disappeared before the usual retention period.