How to Recover Deleted Photos and Videos on Your Phone, Step by Step

Deleting a photo by mistake is one of those small phone disasters everyone goes through. The first instinct is panic; the right move is to slow down and treat the device the way a recovery specialist would. This walkthrough explains exactly what to do, in order, to give yourself the best chance of getting that image or video back.

Step 1: Check the obvious places first

Before installing anything, open your gallery app and look for a folder named Recently Deleted, Trash, or Recycle Bin. On most modern phones, deleted items sit there for around 30 days. If you find the file, restoring it is one tap. Skipping this step is how a lot of people end up using a recovery app they never needed.

Step 2: Look in the cloud

Google Photos, iCloud Photos, Samsung Cloud, OneDrive and Amazon Photos all keep a copy of whatever you back up — and they hold deleted items in their own trash for a while. Sign in from a browser if you can: a desktop view often surfaces files the phone app hides.

Step 3: Freeze the phone

If the file is not in any trash and not in the cloud, the next step is to stop writing to storage. Turn on airplane mode, close camera and chat apps, and avoid downloads. Every megabyte that lands on the device after the deletion can overwrite the bytes you want back.

Step 4: Run a recovery scan

Install a reputable photo recovery app from the official store. Start with a quick scan — it covers the cache and recently flushed thumbnails, which is where most accidentally deleted photos still live. If that comes up empty, run the deep scan and walk away; it can take 20 minutes to an hour depending on storage size.

Step 5: Save the file somewhere safe

When the scan finishes, do not restore recovered images back to the same storage you scanned. Send them to your cloud drive, email them to yourself, or copy them to a computer first. Once everything important is parked somewhere safe, you can move on with confidence.

Back to the main photo recovery guide →

\