How to retrieve permanently deleted videos on iphone

One of my favorite pastimes is to take videos with my iPhone of what I’m seeing while flying an airplane.

I’ve seen some of the most beautiful views in the world from the cockpit. I know that we all have videos that we’ve taken on our iPhones of things that have a magical touch to them and hold a special place in our hearts.

If you have lost videos on your iPhone before by accident, or if they’ve been deleted randomly, we’re going to take a look at how to get them back onto your device.

The Best Ways to Recover Deleted Videos From iPhone

There are many ways to recover deleted videos from your iPhone. Below, we’ve picked out the best and most efficient ones and in the order that you should attempt them!

Way 1 Recovering Deleted Videos Using the Recently Deleted Folder

The first place that we should go to and attempt to recover videos would be the Recently Deleted Folder on our iPhone. This folder is built into your device by Apple and it’s to help if you should delete a video from your main photo library.

Deleted videos on iPhone will be moved to the Recently Deleted folder where they will stay for 30 days before they’re permanently deleted from your device.

We can move deleted videos from the Recently Deleted Folder to the main library by following the steps below.

1. Grab your iPhone and head to the Photos app.
2. Within the Photos app, head to the Albums tab and then scroll down until you see the Recently Deleted folder.
   
3. Look for the videos that you would like to recover and then select them.
4. Select the blue Recover button in the lower right-hand corner and then they will be put back into your main photo library on your device.
   

If you don’t see your videos in the Recently Deleted folder, then let’s move on to using Disk Drill as it can find deleted videos even after the Recently Deleted Folder has been emptied manually or if 30 days have gone by.

Way 2 How to Recover Deleted Videos Using Disk Drill

Disk Drill is a third-party software tool that will allow us to recover deleted videos even after they’ve been emptied from the Recently Deleted Folder on our iPhone.

I’m choosing to use Disk Drill because it’s reliable, very easy to use, and it feels modern. Let’s walk through how to retrieve deleted videos on iPhone in the steps below.

1. Download and install Disk Drill onto your Mac.
   

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2. Launch Disk Drill and then go to iPhone & iPads, select your iPhone from the list of devices listed there.
   
3. Then click on the blue Start scan button in the lower right-hand corner to find deleted videos.
   
4. Wait for the scan process to complete.
5. Select the videos that you would like to recover.
6. Click on the blue Recover button in the lower right-hand corner.

Disk Drill is an amazing iPhone video recovery tool that actually can recover data for you. It seems that there are a lot of apps in the data recovery market, but I have always found that Disk Drill works the best and is the most reliable.

Let’s talk about iCloud video backups next.

Way 3 How to Recover Videos From an iCloud Backup

iCloud is a powerful backup and syncing feature that is built into Apple devices that usually is turned on by default.

We can restore our iPhone to a previous backup that would have the videos that were deleted. This method works best if you were cleaning out a lot of videos, deleted them, and then realized that you want them back as iCloud backups.

If there are videos from weeks ago, Disk Drill will be a better option as it can scan your iPhone and find videos that you deleted a while ago.

Create a current backup of your iPhone before following the steps below just in case the videos aren’t located in the older backup. Keep in mind that if you restore to an older backup, your iPhone will look how it did back on that day and anything new created will not be on your iPhone.

This might be worth it though depending on how important the videos are to you.

1. Once you’ve created a backup using the link above, go to Settings on your iPhone and then tap on your name at the top of the screen.
   
2. Select iCloud from the list of options.
   
3. Select Manage Storage. We can check and see if there are any older iCloud backups for our iPhone. These could have the deleted videos on them.
   
4. After clicking on the Manage Storage option, then click on Backups to see if your iPhone has a backup. You can see that mine is taking up 3.4 GB which is a good sign. That means that there is a backup there.
   
5. Now, I’m able to see more details about what is taking up the 3.4GBs. I have an iPhone backup and an iPad backup as well.
   
6. We now need to reset our iPhone and wipe everything on it to set it up as a new phone which will then allow us to restore from the older iCloud backup.
7. To initiate the reset, go to Settings > General > Transfer or Reset iPhone > Erase All Content and Settings. Your iPhone will then reset and you will be greeted by the setup screen once the process has finished.
8. Go through the setup and choose to restore from an iCloud backup. Make sure to choose the older backup so that your videos will appear.
9. Wait for the backup to finish and that’s it!

If you’re not seeing the deleted videos on your iPhone after restoring from the backup, erase your iPhone again and then restore to the backup that you created before going through the steps above. Your iPhone will then look how it did before the process started.

If nothing above has worked, we can contact a data recovery center.

Way 4 Contact a Data Recovery Center

If nothing above has worked, then it might be a good idea to contact a data recovery center as you can send your iPhone into them and they can try and recover the deleted videos from the device.

CleverFiles offers a data recovery service where you can send in your iPhone for a free quote and they can look at your device and try to get the data off of it. They have a 98% success rate and this is the real deal!

While this option might be expensive, you can’t put a price on your data.

Now, let’s talk about what we can do to protect the videos on our iPhone.

How to Protect Your iPhone Videos

Knowing how to project your iPhone videos is super important as no one thinks that data loss is going to happen to them and if it does, and you have a backup in place, then it’s much easier to recover from it.

Back Up to iCloud

Backing up to iCloud is super easy and it only takes a few steps to do so. Not to mention, backing up to iCloud is free as long as you don’t exceed the 5GBs that Apple gives you. If you do use more than that, purchasing iCloud storage is super cheap.

1. Go to Settings on your iPhone.
2. Tap your name at the top of the screen.
3. Then tap on iCloud.
4. From there, go to iCloud backup and make sure that it is turned on. You can also manually start a backup from this screen.
   

I can’t recommend enough that you use iCloud to protect the data on your iPhone. I pay extra to back up all of my devices since more than one device shares my iCloud account.

It truly is a service that lets you set it and then forget about it. Your data is always being backed up and saved for you.

Back Up Using Finder

We can also create a backup of our iPhone on our Mac by using the Finder. This option works well, but in my opinion not as well as using iCloud.

With iCloud, it will back up automatically for you whenever your device is charging, connected to Wi-Fi, and the screen is locked. With Finder, you have to remember to back up manually.

To back up using Finder, follow the steps below.

1. Plug your iPhone into your Mac.
2. Launch Finder and then find your iPhone from the side column on the left-hand side.
3. After selecting your iPhone, then choose Back Up Now.
   
4. Wait for the backup to complete.

As I mentioned above, the only problem with this method is that you have to remember to back up your iPhone.

If anything ever happens to your Mac, then you also would lose the backup of your iPhone. Whereas with iCloud, your backup is stored automatically and is in another location.

Conclusion

Knowing how to recover deleted videos from an iPhone and then also prevent them from being lost in the future, can help you feel at ease. If you accidentally delete a video on your iPhone, you now know how to get it back.

Hopefully, that doesn’t happen to you though as now you know how to prevent data loss when it comes to the videos on your iPhone.

FAQ

Joel Lockard

Joel Lockard has had a love for technology his whole life. He works as an Airline Pilot and when not flying spends his time tinkering with technology especially Apple-related tech and Mac apps. He is always looking to mak...

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Joel Lockard has had a love for technology his whole life. He works as an Airline Pilot and when not flying spends his time tinkering with technology especially Apple-related tech and Mac apps. He is always looking to mak...

Read full bio

Approved by

Brett Johnson

This article has been approved by Brett Johnson, Data Recovery Engineer at ACE Data Recovery. Brett has a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Systems and Network, 12 years of experience.

This article has been approved by Brett Johnson, Data Recovery Engineer at ACE Data Recovery. Brett has a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Systems and Network, 12 years of experience.

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