The iPhone’s Photos app includes a ‘Recently Deleted’ album that stores photos and videos for 30 days after they are deleted from the Photos Library. When a photo or video is deleted from the iPhone, it is not immediately erased, but instead moved to this Recently Deleted album.
This provides users with a safety net, allowing them to recover accidentally deleted photos and videos within 30 days of deletion, before they are permanently erased from the device. After 30 days, items in Recently Deleted are automatically removed and cannot be recovered through the Photos app.
Deleted Photos Remain in Recently Deleted
When you delete photos from your iPhone, they don’t disappear right away. Instead, the deleted photos are moved to a Recently Deleted album where they remain for 30 days before being permanently erased (Source).
The Recently Deleted album acts as a trash bin, giving you a grace period to recover any photos or videos you may have deleted by accident. As long as the deleted photos are still in the Recently Deleted album, you can retrieve them and restore them back to your Photos library.
After 30 days, the deleted photos are automatically and permanently removed from your iPhone. Once purged from Recently Deleted, it becomes much more difficult to recover the deleted photos. So it’s important to act fast if you need to restore any lost images.
Recovering Photos
If you accidentally delete a photo, you can easily restore it from the Recently Deleted album as long as 30 days haven’t passed. The Recently Deleted album acts as a temporary holding place for deleted photos. Here are the steps to recover deleted photos on an iPhone:
1. Open the Photos app and select the Albums tab at the bottom.1
2. Scroll down and tap on Recently Deleted to open the album. You will see thumbnails of your recently deleted photos.
3. Tap Select in the top right corner to enter selection mode.
4. Tap the photos you want to recover so they have a checkmark.
5. Tap Recover at the bottom to restore the selected photos back into your Photos library. The photos will be returned to their original album.
If you want to recover all the deleted photos in Recently Deleted, simply tap Recover All at the bottom of the album instead of selecting individual photos.2
This allows you to easily undo accidental deletions as long as you notice within 30 days. However, once a photo has been in Recently Deleted for over 30 days, it will be permanently deleted. Make sure to recover anything important before that cutoff.
Permanent Deletion
Photos that are deleted on an iPhone are not immediately erased from the device. They are first moved to the Recently Deleted album, where they remain for 30 days before being permanently deleted. After 30 days, the photos are irreversibly removed from the device and there is no way to recover them through the Photos app.
The Recently Deleted album acts as a holding place for recently deleted photos and videos. It allows you to recover media if you accidentally deleted something you wanted to keep. However, the content in Recently Deleted is automatically cleared out after 30 days. This is done to free up storage space on your device over time.
Once the 30 day period expires, deleted photos and videos are permanently erased from the iPhone storage through an irreversible deletion process. At this point, they cannot be retrieved from the Recently Deleted album. The data is overwritten so that it can no longer be accessed or recovered by any means through the Photos app.
So in summary, when you delete photos from the Recently Deleted album itself, those files are permanently gone after 30 days and can no longer be recovered using the iPhone’s built-in tools. The only way to get the photos back after permanent deletion is through specialized third-party software designed for data recovery.
Deleting from Recently Deleted
When you manually delete photos from the Recently Deleted album before the 30-day period, the photos are permanently erased from your iPhone storage. According to source, once you tap the “Delete” button on a photo in Recently Deleted, that photo is gone forever with no way to recover it.
Deleting photos manually from Recently Deleted bypasses the automatic 30-day retention period where deleted photos are kept before being permanently erased. So those photos will not be included in any restore from an iPhone or iCloud backup during that window. They are immediately and irreversibly removed from your device and iCloud storage.
It’s worth noting that while you can manually delete photos in Recently Deleted at any time, the album still has a size limit according to source. Once you’ve filled up the allocated storage, older deleted photos will be removed first automatically to make room for new deletions.
Clearing All Photos
Tapping the “Delete All” button in the Recently Deleted album will immediately and permanently delete every photo and video in that album. According to Apple’s support article on recovering deleted photos and videos, “The Delete All option removes every photo and video from the album” [1]. Once you tap Delete All, there is no undo and no way to recover those deleted photos.
It’s important to be very careful when tapping Delete All, as it will bypass the 30-day grace period and instantly wipe out your entire Recently Deleted album. Apple provides a warning prompt before deleting everything, but once confirmed, all media is erased right away. If you had photos you wanted to recover in Recently Deleted, they will be gone forever once you tap Delete All.
In summary, the Delete All button will immediately and permanently clear out all photos and videos from the Recently Deleted album, without any chance for recovery. Use this feature cautiously, only when you are absolutely certain you no longer need anything in that album.
Preventing Permanent Deletion
It can be frustrating when photos are accidentally permanently deleted from your iPhone. Here are some tips to avoid this happening:
1. Back up your photos regularly – Whether using iCloud Photo Library or manually backing up to a computer, having a separate copy of your photos stored safely offline means deleted photos can still be recovered.
2. Use the “Recover Deleted Photos” option if available – In Photos app, go to Albums > Recently Deleted to find photos deleted within the past 30 days. You can restore them from here.
3. Be careful when selecting photos to delete – Go slowly and double check before confirming deletion of any photos. Accidental permanent deletion is less likely when you carefully choose each item.
4. Turn off “Optimize iPhone Storage” – This setting automatically removes lower resolution versions of photos saved to your iPhone. Disable it to keep all versions.
5. Lock the Recently Deleted album – Stop automatic deletion after 30 days by locking the Recently Deleted album. Swipe left on the album cover, tap More, then turn on the switch for Lock Album.
Alternative Recovery Options
If you have permanently deleted photos from your iPhone’s camera roll and they are no longer in the Recently Deleted album, there are limited options for recovering them after 30 days. The native Photos app and iCloud backups only retain deleted content for up to 30 days before permanently removing it.
However, there are some third-party iOS data recovery apps that may be able to help recover deleted photos from your iPhone, even if it has been longer than 30 days. These apps work by scanning your iPhone’s internal storage for residual data from deleted files.
Some examples of iOS data recovery apps to try include:
- Fonelab iPhone Data Recovery
- Tenorshare iPhone Data Recovery
- iMyFone iPhone Data Recovery
- Stellar iPhone Data Recovery
While these apps don’t guarantee recovering permanently deleted photos, they may be able to rescue photos deleted over 30 days ago from your iPhone when other methods fail. Be sure to use a reliable and reputable data recovery app.
Recently Deleted Size Limit
The Recently Deleted folder on iPhones has a storage size limit of around 5GB. This means that the deleted photos and videos will remain in this folder temporarily until it reaches its capacity. At that point, the oldest deleted items will start being removed permanently to free up space for new deletions.
According to Apple’s support page, the Recently Deleted folder can hold up to 1000 of your most recently deleted photos and videos from the last 30 days. With an average photo size of 3-5MB, this would amount to around 3-5GB of storage space allocated to this folder.
Once the 5GB limit is reached, the oldest deleted items will be removed starting with photos and videos past the 30 day window first. Your most recent deletions will remain for the full 30 days before being permanently erased.
To avoid losing deleted items prematurely, it’s recommended to regularly review and recover anything you still want from Recently Deleted before it gets permanently removed. You can also offload photos to iCloud or an external storage device to reduce the usage of your iPhone’s built-in storage.
Overall, being aware of the finite size allotted to Recently Deleted can help you avoid permanently losing important photos and videos you may want to recover later on.
Conclusion
To briefly summarize, when you delete photos from your iPhone’s camera roll, they are not immediately erased. Instead, the photos are moved to a Recently Deleted album where they remain for 30 days.
During this 30 day window, you can recover and restore photos from Recently Deleted back into your camera roll if you change your mind. After 30 days, the photos will be permanently deleted.
You can manually delete photos from Recently Deleted if you want to permanently erase them before the 30 day window is up. Just keep in mind this deletion is irreversible.
The Recently Deleted album acts as a safety net, giving you a month to rescue photos before they are gone forever. Be aware of the 30 day limit and recover important photos while you still can.