Mistakenly deleting photos from your Phone is one of the worst things that could happen, especially if you are unsure if there is a backup copy of it. If you own an Android phone, there are some ways in which you can recover deleted photos that are deleted from your phone.

What Happens when a File was Deleted?

Before you get started with recovering your files, you need to first know what happens when files are deleted. When you delete a file, the deletion almost happens instantaneously, as opposed to copying a file, where the time taken is proportional to the size of the file.

When you delete a file, the file remains intact on your memory, but that space is marked as free so that it can be used for other purposes. So, when you delete a file, it actually stays there on your phone until it is overwritten by other files. Please check the following steps to recover deleted photos on Android.

Step 1: Stop Using the Phone

If you have deleted a file by mistake, then stop working on any other apps, especially the apps that will write files to your phones, such as browsers and cameras. Pause all app updates and kill unnecessary apps. You will not know when some app has overwritten on the space where your photo was stored making the recovery impossible.

Step 2:Look for Online or Local Backups

Put down your phone and look for backups. If you have auto backups enabled to OneDrive, Google Drive, or Dropbox, then you can go online using a PC and check if the photo has been backed up or not. If you could find a backup, that is the end of your worries, otherwise, you need to opt for the hard way.

Step 3: Scan Internal Memory on Android Phone

One of the biggest drawbacks of Android phones is the lack of SD card support. In such cases, you can simply take out the card and scan it on your PC. However, for Internal memory, it will a bit time-consuming. First of all, you will need a PC with an Internet connection, and a data cable to connect the phone to the PC.

You will need third-party software to scan your phone. There are tons of programs out there that will scan your phone and find the photos that you have deleted mistakenly. One such program is TunesBro DiskLab for Android. You may not get the program for free, but a trial version will suffice. All the programs work in a similar fashion, so this is just a generic guide.

Once you have installed the program, you need to change a setting on your phone called USB Debugging. Turning on USB Debugging will be a little bit different in different versions of Android.  Go to “Settings” and then go to “About Phone”. Tap the “Build number” until you get a note that you are in developer mode. Then go back to Settings, and tap on “Developer options”. Under that, select “USB Debugging”.

Based on what version of Android you have, the procedure may vary, search the web on how to turn on USB debugging on your version of the phone to know more.

Then, connect your phone to the PC. You will get a prompt on the device instantly as to which mode to use to connect the phone. You need to connect the storage to the PC. If you do not see this option, you need to wait for a little until Windows installs the device and then you can see the device under This PC.

Now, you will need to select what you need to scan for. You will see, depending on what program you are using, photos, messages, contacts, or even more. Before you start the scan, the Recovery program will install another app on your phone to gain access to the phone’s drive. This can be Super User, Super SU, Kinguser, or SuperSU CMW. Once done, the app will scan your phone and list the files it found. You can simply click on recovery to get them back. However, it is to be noted that a file may or may not be recoverable depending on how much data is written on the phone until the photo was deleted.

Final notice: Backup Your Phone Frequently

To avoid problems like these, make a habit to perform backups. Turn on auto backup to the cloud and periodically check the backup. Also, you can use an OTG drive to offload content to it. These will prevent future mishaps like this.