I deleted a WhatsApp conversation by mistake on my Samsung Galaxy S23. It had photos from a family trip that I hadn't saved anywhere else.
WhatsApp shows the chat is gone. Is there any way to recover it? I have Google Drive backup enabled but the last backup was 3 days ago and the conversation was from yesterday.
A few options depending on how far back you need to go.
Local backup (easiest): WhatsApp saves daily local backups to your phone storage at /sdcard/WhatsApp/Databases/. These are kept for 7 days. Rename the file you want to restore (for example msgstore-2024-11-02.1.db.crypt15) to msgstore.db.crypt15, then uninstall and reinstall WhatsApp. It will offer to restore from that file.
Google Drive backup: Your Drive backup is 3 days old but if the photos were sent before that cutoff, they'll be in there. Uninstall WhatsApp, reinstall and choose Restore from Google Drive when prompted.
If neither covers it: SysTools Android Data Recovery can scan the device storage directly and pull WhatsApp data even if not in a backup, though this needs USB debugging enabled.
Found the local backup files. There's one from yesterday at 2am. Trying the rename method now.
It worked. Conversation is back including all the photos. The rename trick is much simpler than I expected. Marking solved.