How to recover deleted photos on Android
Sheeraz Ali
2
If you've ever deleted a photo album by mistake or had your smartphone go haywire and wipe everything in your gallery, then you know that particular variety of ''bottomless pit in your guts'' feeling. Never fear, we'll show you just how easy it is to recover lost photos on Android, whether you have a Nexus 5, Galaxy S5 or Droid X. There's only one thing to remember: act fast.
As you've probably guessed, speed is of the essence, so first thing's first: turn off your Wi-Fi and data connections on your phone. This is because when data is deleted, whether photos, music, documents or whatever, it is not actually deleted until something has been written over the top of it in memory. All that is initially deleted is the index that points to where the data starts, so as long as you can find that point again you can get your pictures back and a poorly timed update can be disastrous. Here's how to get your photos back.
Note: this process requires root privileges on your phone.
How to recover lost photos on Android
1. Download a free program on your computer called Dr Fone for Android by Wondershare. There's other programs available, but we've always had good results with Dr Fone.
2. Install the program and launch it. You'll see the screen below.
3. Connect your smartphone to your computer with a USB cable. You need to have USB Debugging enabled on your smartphone for this process to work. If you do not already have this option enabled, simply go to your Settings > About Phone and tap the Build Number repeatedly until the notification appears to say Developer Options have been enabled. Back in your main Settings screen you'll see Developer Options down near the bottom. Scroll through the settings until you see USB Debugging and check the box beside it. You'll see a notification at the bottom of the Dr. Fone screen saying that USB Debugging is being opened.
4. Once Dr Fone for Android has made the connection to your smartphone you'll be able to select from the following categories of deleted files. We're only after photos, but of course, if you've lost more than just photos you can tick as many as you like.
5. The next step asks you to scan for deleted files or all files. If you're after a quick recovery of your lost pictures to set your mind at rest take the ''Deleted files'' option. You'll need to accept the RSA key prompt on your smartphone (check ''Always accept'' to make it easier), making the connection between the two devices secure and of course, grant Superuser permission when prompted.
6. One this is done, Dr Fone will analyze your phone. There will be reboots and possibly some weird screen popping up on your phone. Just let Dr Fone do its thing.
7. Once Dr Fone has finished analyzing your phone you'll get the scan results screen where you can check the boxes for the photos (or other files, as you can see below, depending which file types you selected earlier) that you want to save, then hit ''Recover'' and you're golden.
8. If you've made it this far you've hopefully learned a valuable lesson and will make regular copies of your smartphone data from now on. Don't worry, we have plenty of tutorials on the site for that too! We've also used Dr Fone to recover deleted text messages where we shared a great app for backing up your SMS as well.
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