Recover iMessage Convo w/ Messages in iCloud

I clumsily hit the wrong X when deleting an iMessage thread on my Mac. Instead of deleting the conversation containing a one-time code, I deleted the conversation with my wife.

I have Messages in iCloud enabled.

Is there a way for me to recover that conversation?

(I have an iCloud backup from the night before and no recent iTunes backups)

iCloud backups does not store messages.

Give Apple a call or chat. They might be able to help you.

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This gave me shudders. My Messages thread with my wife is over 5 years in length. It would be devastating to lose it. I have not been persistent about backups with iMazing – just now plugged the phone into my MacBook to kick that off.

I feel your concern @Scottisloud – let us know if you get help from Apple or elsewhere.

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I’ll have to see what imazing can dig up, but I fear without a local iTunes backup there’s nothing to work with.

Indeed, this is several years of admittedly rather banal, but nevertheless sentimental, chatter covering international moves and career changes and what we’re going to cook for dinner!

In another community I belong to people complained about the delete confirmation dialogue, and I defended it as important to protect against these very situations, and indeed even that wasn’t enough to stop me from incorrectly clicking and blasting past the warning!

I hadn’t thought to reach out to Apple, and frankly I think his may be a lost cause. May still give it a shot.

If all else fails, time to start a new log of banal chatter.

For accuracy’s sake, I believe they do store messages if messages in iCloud is NOT enabled. In my case it is enabled, so you are right, they are not going to be in the backup.

I believe messages are stored in ~/Library/Messages so you might be able to restore the contents of that folder (in its entirety) to a prior date from Time Machine, after saving the current contents to a safety folder. (There are dragons here :dragon::dragon: so be careful.)

These are SQL database files, so reading them might be another (more painful) option.

I’ll take a look in there, I haven’t always been successful in being able to actually add content back from that directory into Messages, but we’ll see, it’s been a while (a few OS versions) since I’ve noodled around in those directories.

I’m so sorry, you’re right. I ment in this spesific situation, an iCloud backup would not contain the messages.

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I figured that was what you meant :smile: But wanted to make it clear as crystal should some poor scamp come looking around these fora having had the same problem!