How to read deleted messages on WhatsApp?

25 August 2022 · 3 min read

If you have the same level of anxiety as I do when it comes to deleted messages

Be it the sender makes a typo, or the message is not intended for you and is sent to you by mistake. Whatever the reason might be when I see

I lose my shit. I get overly curious and anxious about what was deleted!

This is what you need

You need help.
You need this article.

There are two ways you could do this, and both are using an android phone. (I will try to update this if I figure out how to on iOS!)

Use Android's inbuilt "Notification history"

Since Android 11, Android has provided support to record notification history. This would be disabled by default on most phones and would have to be enabled.

The navigation to Notification history would be different for different "skins" of android.

The most common path is

Android 11: Settings --> Apps & Notifications --> Notifications ---> Advanced --> Notification history
Android 12/13: Settings --> Notifications & Status Bar --> More Settings --> Notification history --> Turn on Notification History

Or you could just search for Notification History in Settings!

Et voila! Now you have access to every notification that you've ever received and/or dismissed!

One thing to note is that you would not be able to recover media using this method!

Using an app from the Play Store

Although there are numerous apps for this purpose on Google Play, WAMR is the app of my choice.

Download the app https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.drilens.wamr on your phone.
Go through the initial setup.
The app would need permission to read notifications. Grant necessary permissions.
If you want to restore deleted media as well, you will have to give the app permission to access media as well!

What this app does is the same, it reads the notifications from the apps you have selected and records them in a UI like what the application has. So, you could say this would have better readability than checking notifications from notification history.

As mentioned, this will work with multiple apps and media files that are deleted can be recovered!

What's the catch?

For both methods, there is a catch. That is to recover a notification, you guessed it!

You should receive a notification in the first place!

So, these will not work if you have your notifications for the app or chat turned off or if you have your internet turned off when the sender sent and deleted the message.