Recover your deleted photos on Android – how to

Recover your deleted photos on Android – how to

Robert Haba
Robert HabaFounder · Editor-in-Chief
PublishedSeptember 19, 2020
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We’ve all deleted pictures on our phones by mistake before, but what if you delete anything absolutely irreplaceable? You don’t have to panic, but to retrieve your files, you do need to act quickly. Just follow our instructions below and you should be able to jiffy your pictures back.

Do not be concerned, it is not too late! If you’re just morbidly curious about what could happen to your pictures, then we can also advise you how to back them up so you never have to feel the panic again.

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Recover deleted photos with an app

First, head to the Play Store and grab DiskDigger photo recovery and then run the app. There are a few apps on the Play Store that claim to recover deleted photos, but after our investigation, DiskDigger was not only more reliable, but was less intrusive when it came to serving up ads, too.

When you have the app, it’s helpful to turn off your phone’s Wi-Fi and data connections. The explanation for doing this is that when data is removed, whether images, music or documents, it is not completely removed until something in the device’s memory has been written over it. In addition, it ‘s important that you quickly uninstall all of your phone cleaning applications, since they will permanently erase the files you inadvertently deleted, making them impossible to restore.

NOTE: DiskDigger is limited to retrieving images from your thumbnail caches on a non-rooted computer, meaning the images are likely to be of poorer quality than the original photos or videos. It is only possible to restore the original full-resolution versions of the images or videos by rooting your computer and getting the app’s Pro version. If you don’t know how to root your phone, then refer to our full guide on how to get started with rooting Android.

If you’ve recently deleted your photos, DiskDigger should be able to find those photos, and you’ll be given the option of whether to restore them to a folder on your device, or back them up to a cloud service.

recover deleted photos
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At first, it didn’t look like DiskDigger could locate our images, but our deleted pictures were discovered by a fast dip into its settings and unchecking the minimum file size factor. Like we said above, if you want to recover your images, you’ll need the App’s Pro edition, which can be found at the link below. Less than $4 to get your memories back is a small price to pay.

Be careful if you use the cleanup feature in the app, as some users have deleted all their photos because they didn’t understand that it would delete everything, not just the images they deleted on purpose to save space.

Once you’ve recovered your photos, you’ll want to make sure this never happens again. And we all know prevention is better than the cure.

Back up your photos on Google Photos

Now that we’ve explained how to recover deleted photos on Android, the next step is to prevent this situation from happening again. To do this, we recommend using an app such as Google Photos. It offers unlimited photo storage (so long as the files aren’t too large) and the backup function is easy to set up.

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If the app has been enabled, just go to its Settings, then Backup & Sync, and you can choose how much – and by what process – you want your images backed up to. Of course we suggest that you back up as soon as possible.

Robert Haba
Founder · Editor-in-Chief
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Robert Haba is the founder and editor-in-chief of Droid Tools. A lifelong gadget enthusiast with over a decade following the Android ecosystem, he built this publication to cut through the noise and give readers honest, real-world coverage of the tech they actually use.

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