How to recover old deleted videos from iphone

How to recover old deleted videos from iphone

With the quality of iPhone cameras improving, we can now reliably use them as the only video capture device in our pocket. The amount of detail and quality of video recording has improved to the point that they are starting to rival some of the entry-level DSLR cameras in the market.

With us capturing so many moments with our iPhones, when something happens to the footage that we captured, it can be frustrating. In this article, we will look at multiple ways to retrieve deleted videos on your iPhone and get them back onto your device.

  • Where Are Videos Stored on iPhone?
  • How to Choose The Right Video Recovery Method
    • 🎞️ 1st Consideration: The Origin of the Video
    • 📱 2nd Consideration: The Condition of Your iPhone
    • 🔒 3rd Consideration: Backup Availability
  • Method 1: Recover Deleted Videos from the Photos App
  • Method 2: Retrieve Your Video From an iCloud Backup
    • Selectively Retrieve a Deleted Video
    • Restore Your iPhone with an iCloud Backup
  • Method 3: Recover Using an iTunes Backup
  • Method 4: ✅ Recover Deleted Videos Using Data Recovery Software
  • FAQ:
  • Conclusion

Where Are Videos Stored on iPhone?

Videos that you take on your iPhone, are stored in the Photos app. This app comes installed natively on your device and allows you to manage, edit, and share your videos from right within the app itself.

Use the Photos app to view your photos and videos organized by years, months, days, and there is also an all photos view.

In addition to being stored on our iPhone, our videos are also stored in iCloud if enabled. This will become key later when we look at one of the methods for video recovery.

How to Choose The Right Video Recovery Method

To maximize your recovery chances, you need to choose the right video recovery method for the job, which is why we highly recommend you keep in mind the following three considerations.

🎞️ 1st Consideration: The Origin of the Video

Most of the time, we capture video directly on our iPhone itself. The other option is that the videos were transferred over from an old iPhone. If you have a separate camera, then you may import videos to your iPhone using a Mac or iPhone adapter as well.

The Photos app will store all of the videos that you have either taken with your iPhone, or ones that you have imported using a computer. This is nice as it puts all of the videos that we have on our device into one place.

If your iPhone is functioning and working, then you will want to use the methods mentioned below (like iPhone recovery software) as one of them should be able to recover accidentally deleted videos on your iPhone.

📱 2nd Consideration: The Condition of Your iPhone

If your iPhone has suffered either water damage or physical damage, then you will want to contact a professional data recovery service for data recovery, as iPhone video recovery may not be possible unless a professional does it for you.

Keep in mind though, that if the data has been written over by something new they may not be able to recover it and some storage devices can be damaged beyond repair. Contacting the company first explaining your situation is the best option.

🔒 3rd Consideration: Backup Availability

If you have either a local or cloud backup of your iPhone, then you’re in luck because you should be able to recover the lost video with just a few clicks and without paying any money. Of course, what we just said applies only if you backup your data on a regular basis since an outdated backup is barely any better than no backup at all.

The good news is that there are multiple recovery methods that can help you restore your videos even without a suitable backup available, and we explore them in this article.

Method 1: Recover Deleted Videos from the Photos App

As previously mentioned, the Photos app on your iPhone is where all of the videos that you have captured are stored. If you’re wondering “how do I find deleted videos?”, they’re located within the Recently Deleted folder. Using this method for recovering the deleted video is the first that should be attempted as it is the easiest.

  1. Open the Photos app on your iPhone.
  2. Tap on Albums and then scroll down until you see Recently Deleted, it should be right at the bottom of the list.
    How to recover old deleted videos from iphone
  3. From here, click on Select which will be in the upper right-hand corner of your screen, and tap on the recently deleted videos that you would like to recover. If you want to recover all of them, you can click on Recover All. This makes retrieving deleted videos from your iPhone super easy, as the recently deleted ones are all located in the Recently Deleted folder.
    How to recover old deleted videos from iphone
  4. Click on Recover, and then the deleted videos will be restored and put back into your All Photos view.
    How to recover old deleted videos from iphone

Videos will show the days remaining before deletion from within the Recently Deleted folder. After this time has expired, they will then be permanently deleted from your device. It may take up to 40 days for this process to complete so you have some time if you delete a video and then realize that you want to restore it.

The Hidden album contains any files that you have hidden from view. Here’s how to recover a video from the Hidden folder:

    1. Open the Photos app by clicking its icon.
    2. Tap on Albums.
    3. Open the Hidden folder.
      How to recover old deleted videos from iphone
    4. Tap on Select in the top right corner.
      How to recover old deleted videos from iphone
    5. Choose the video you want to unhide by tapping it.
    6. Tap the icon on the bottom left corner of the screen.
      How to recover old deleted videos from iphone
    7. Scroll down through the options and select Unhide.
      How to recover old deleted videos from iphone
    8. The video will be returned to your library.

Method 2: Retrieve Your Video From an iCloud Backup

If you are using iCloud to back up the data on your iPhone, you can use this backup to recover a deleted video. You can use either of the following two methods depending on when the video was deleted and its availability in iCloud.

Selectively Retrieve a Deleted Video

Use the following procedure to retrieve a specific video on iCloud:

  1. Log into iCloud.com using your iPhone’s Apple ID.
  2. Click on the Photos icon.
    How to recover old deleted videos from iphone
  3. Under Library in the sidebar, click on Recently Deleted.
  4. Locate the video you want to restore and select it by clicking its thumbnail.
    How to recover old deleted videos from iphone
  5. Click on Restore at the top of the screen to restore the video.

Restore Your iPhone with an iCloud Backup

If you cannot locate the video you wish to restore in iCloud Photos, you can completely restore your iPhone from an iCloud backup using the following procedure. Be aware that using this method will erase everything currently on your iPhone. For that reason, we strongly recommend that you take a backup of the device before proceeding, just to be safe.

  1. Create a backup of your iPhone before starting to restore video from iCloud. This will ensure that if anything goes wrong during the restore, we have a backup in place.
  2. Factory reset your iPhone. To initiate the reset, go to Settings > General > Reset > Erase All Content and Settings. Your iPhone will then reset and this might take a couple of moments to complete.
    How to recover old deleted videos from iphone
  3. You will be greeted by a screen that asks if you want to restore data, and you want to choose Restore from an iCloud backup. Your iPhone will need to stay on and connected to Wi-Fi for this entire process.
  4. Look for a backup that is around the same date that you last remember having the videos that you lost. Select that backup to retrieve videos from an iCloud backup and they will then start to restore to your device.
  5. Allow the restore to complete, and then check the Photos app to see if the lost videos have been restored.

Method 3: Recover Using an iTunes Backup

If you plug your iPhone into your computer and have the Music app or iTunes installed, then there is a chance that your iPhone could be backing up to that device.

You can restore your iPhone from a backup on your computer using the Music app which is more current, but if you’re using an older version of macOS or Windows then iTunes will be the app to look for. The steps are pretty much the same in both, so the steps below can be followed no matter which you’re using.

  1. Plug your iPhone into your computer.
  2. Select your iPhone from the drop-down menu on the left-hand side and then click on “Sync Settings…”.
    How to recover old deleted videos from iphone
  3. Once on the Summary page, select “Restore Backup…”. This can be found from within the General tab. You can also manage backups and back up your iPhone from within this window as well.
    How to recover old deleted videos from iphone
  4. After clicking the Restore Backup… option, your iPhone will restore back to the backup that you selected and your deleted videos will go back onto your phone. This will take some time depending on the size of the backup. Make sure your iPhone is plugged into your computer during this whole process as it can’t be interrupted!

Method 4: ✅ Recover Deleted Videos Using Data Recovery Software

If your lost videos can’t be retrieved using the above methods, then it’s time to use data recovery software to retrieve the deleted photos.

Disk Drill Data Recovery for Mac is an app that allows you to recover deleted videos from your iPhone without a backup. The videos are still there, but just not visible to us. With data recovery software, it makes retrieving deleted video from iPhone easy to do.


🎁 Apply a coupon “DDIPHONE-VIDEO” during the checkout process, and you’ll get Disk Drill PRO Lifetime (Mac edition) with a 50% discount.


  1. Download and install Disk Drill for your computer.
  2. To get deleted videos back on your iPhone, plug it into your computer and choose it as the device to scan.
    How to recover old deleted videos from iphone
  3. Wait for the scanning process to complete.
    How to recover old deleted videos from iphone
  4. After the scan has completed, you will be greeted by all of the found files on your iPhone. Click on the Photos icon to view the deleted videos that Disk Drill was able to find.
    How to recover old deleted videos from iphone
  5. Once on the recovered videos screen, you can select what you would like to recover.
  6. Select the videos that you would like to recover and then click the blue Recover button in the lower right-hand corner of the screen.
    How to recover old deleted videos from iphone
  7. Choose a path for Disk Drill to recover the deleted videos from iPhone and click OK.
    How to recover old deleted videos from iphone
  8. You will then be greeted by a confirmation message letting you know that the recovery was successful.

FAQ:

You can recover permanently deleted videos from an iPhone without a backup by using data recovery software. This specialized software tool scans your iPhone’s storage for logically deleted videos that are still physically present on the device and restores them so you can view them again.

You can use one of the following methods to get old videos back on an iPhone.

  • Restore your iPhone from an iCloud backup. This is the most effective way of recovering old videos and highlights the importance of backing up your iPhone.
  • Use data recovery software to scan your device and restore deleted videos. If you have used your iPhone to store new data, the deleted videos may have been overwritten and no longer be available to restore. Recovery software works best on devices that have not been used extensively after the given files were deleted.

You need to use an iCloud backup to recover permanently deleted videos from an iPhone without a computer. This procedure involves resetting your iPhone to its factory settings and then restoring its data using an iCloud backup.

You cannot retrieve selected videos from an iCloud backup. You need to restore your iPhone from the backup with the following procedure.

  1. Reset the iPhone by going to Settings > General > Reset > Erase All Content and Settings.
  2. When prompted, choose to restore data from an iCloud backup.
  3. Find a suitable backup to use for the recovery that may contain the selected videos.
  4. Perform the restore. When it completes, look in the Photos app to see if the videos have been restored. If not, you may need to use a different backup file.

Conclusion

As seen above, there are multiple methods for recovering deleted videos on iPhone. To ensure that your videos are safe, it is best to make it a practice of backing up your device. iCloud is the best way to do this, as you don’t have to think about it and it will back up every night for you.

Losing videos on your iPhone is never fun. Being able to recover them and get them back onto our device will let us rest easy knowing that if we should lose them, we can most likely get them back.

Can I recover permanently deleted videos from my iPhone?

On iCloud.com, you can recover files deleted from both iCloud Drive and other apps within the last 30 days, whether you deleted them on iCloud.com or another device that has iCloud Drive turned on. However, you can't recover or restore files you permanently remove.

How do I recover permanently deleted videos?

Restore photos & videos.
On your Android phone or tablet, open the Google Photos app ..
At the bottom, tap Library Trash ..
Touch and hold the photo or video you want to restore..
At the bottom, tap Restore. The photo or video will be back: In your phone's gallery app. In your Google Photos library. In any albums it was in..

How do I recover permanently deleted media from my iPhone?

Here's how to do it:.
Open the Photos app..
Tap Albums on the bottom menu. Tap on "Albums." ... .
Scroll down until you reach the Utilities section and tap Recently Deleted. ... .
Tap Select at the top-right of the screen. ... .
Select every photo that you want to return to your iPhone..
In the lower-right corner, tap Recover..