Deleted my entire photo library by accident at the airport

I was sitting in gate 14 at O'Hare waiting for my flight to Dallas and trying to free up space on my phone. Hit "select all" in the photos app and thought I was moving them to a folder, but it was the trash button instead. Lost about 900 pictures from the last 2 years including my sister's wedding photos. Has anyone found a good recovery tool that actually works for deleted photos on an iPhone?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_paul7h ago

Dude that is brutal. Same thing happened to me last year. Was clearing out screenshots on my phone and thought I was just deleting duplicates but I wiped out a whole folder of 400 photos from a family reunion. Tried every recovery app I could find. Disk Drill, iMazing, Dr. Fone. None of them actually got the photos back. Apple's security just kills any chance of recovery once you delete them. I still get sick thinking about it. Hope you have better luck than I did but honestly I would just accept they're gone and move on.

the_hayden6h ago

Exactly the same thing here, man. I tried all those apps too and nothing worked. It's crazy how once you hit that delete button on an iPhone those photos are basically gone forever. I had a friend tell me about some iCloud trick where you can recover stuff from "Recently Deleted" but that only works if you catch it within 30 days. After that, it's like they never existed. The worst part is how it makes you paranoid about cleaning up your phone now. I went through that sick feeling too, just staring at the empty folder, wondering why Apple can't just let us have a real trash system like on a computer. Have you ever found any workaround for this, or are we both just stuck with the scars?