“Last night I allowed my kid sister to play with my Huawei phone. This morning, when I checked the device, I realized that all my photos are gone. My guess is that my sister deleted all the pictures from the gallery by mistake and kept quiet about it. Is it possible for me to recover deleted photos from the Android phone for free? I will appreciate your help!” – Morrison, Quora
If you regularly take pictures using your Android phone or tablet, you are likely to get frustrated when you realize that you lost these photos. Apart from someone deleting your photos by mistake, additional reasons which could cause the loss of your photos include:
- Malicious malware attack
- Accidental formatting
- Rooting the device
- Factory reset
- ROM flash
Irrespective of how you lose your photos, you would want to know how to get the pictures back from Android gallery. In this article, we will show you the solutions you can use whenever you lose your important photos. However, before we show you how to recover deleted photos from Android phone for free, let’s see whether it is actually possible to recover deleted photos.
Can You Recover Deleted Photos from Android Phone?
Android photo recovery is made possible by the fact that after photos get deleted, they aren’t moved from your Android device permanently. Irrespective of whether you use the device’s internal storage or you have an SD card, the deleted pictures are still available on the smartphone. You just can’t see it.
The space occupied by the deleted Android photos is simply marked as available by the Android OS. When you create more data on your device, the data could end up replacing the deleted pictures. This is referred to as overwriting. If your deleted photos get overwritten, recovering them becomes impossible.
To make sure that your photos do not get overwritten, you can do the following:
- Stop using your Android device the moment you realize that you have lost your photos.
- Turn off both the Wi-Fi and mobile data. Both can save new data on your device and hence overwriting your deleted pictures.
- Don’t format your device.
- If possible, turn the device off until you find a viable solution.
Recover Deleted Photos from Android Phone for Free
Solution 1: Use a Free Android Photo Recovery Application [Recommended]
A good Android photo recovery tool should have the ability to take advantage of the fact that the deleted data is still available on the device. While there are numerous android data recovery tools online and on Google Play Store, very few tools really recover deleted photos. Most tools offer a wide range of promises but fail to keep them.
One application which stands out is the free photo recovery app for Android: FindMyPhoto. The tool already has some positive comments from users who were satisfied with the results produced by the app. The tool will work with all devices running on Android 2.2 and above. This means that this free app should retrieve the deleted photos from your Android phone or tablet.
Unlike most Android data recovery tools which require your device to be rooted, this tool will work on any device irrespective of whether it is rooted or not. Above all, it’s completely free and does not have pop-up ads that would ruin your experience of using the application.
People who use FindMyPhoto to undelete their deleted photos enjoy a wide range of features, including:
- The tool is 100% free of charge and pop-up ads.
- It is not just capable of recovering deleted photos, it will also help you to recover your lost videos.
- The tool will help you save the deleted photos and videos from Android devices.
- It enables you to recover deleted photos from Android phone without computer.
- The tool can help you recover your photos from both the smartphone internal storage space and the external memory card.
- The tool won’t just recover PNG files, it can also help you get your JPG pictures back.
To verify that this data recovery tool is incredibly easy to use, we have outlined the steps you need to follow to recover your deleted photos:
Step 1: Open Google Play Store on your Android device and search for
FindMyPhoto. Install the application on your device.
Step 2: Launch the tool and click the “Tap to Recovery” button. This should be available in the middle of the screen. Allow the tool to scan your device for deleted photos.
Step 3: After the scanning, the tool will display all your deleted pictures. You can preview the pictures and select the ones you would like to recover.
Step 4: Finally, tap Select and Recovery on the bottom right corner. This should help you get your deleted photos back from the photo gallery.
Solution 2: Retrieve Your Lost Pictures from Google Photos
If your device is running on a recent Android version, it should have Google Photos on it. If you have already synced Google Photos with your Gmail account, you may be able to recover deleted photos from Android phone for free via the Google service.
It is worth noting that once you delete your photos, recovery from the Google Photos will be possible within the first 2 months (60 days). After the first 60 days have passed, the photos will be deleted permanently.
If you do have Google Photos on your Android device, follow the steps below to learn how to recover deleted photos from Android phone for free from Google Photos:
Step 1: Locate the Google Photos icon on your Android device and tap on it to launch the app.
Step 2: On the top-left corner, tap the 3-horizontal bar menu.
Step 3: On the menu that appears, select Trash.
Step 4: All the photos you have deleted within the last 60 days should appear in this folder. Preview the pictures and select the ones you would like to get back.
Step 5: Finally, click Restore.
Solution 3: Restore the Deleted Photos Via Google Drive
Google Drive is a cloud storage service offered by Google. The steps you need to follow to recover your deleted photos on Android via Google Drive are almost similar to the ones you follow when recovering photos from Google Photos. We have outlined these steps below:
Step 1: Locate Google Drive on your phone and launch it.
Step 2: Click the three horizontal dashes available on the top-left corner. Next, select Trash.
Step 3: Select the photos you would like to recover and then select the three dots available on the top right corner. From the options which appear, select Restore.
Solution 4: Recover Deleted Pictures from Android Phone with Dropbox
If you use Dropbox on your Android device, there is a chance that your deleted pictures could be available on the cloud service. Unlike Google Photos which saves deleted photos for 60 days, Dropbox saves the deleted files for a maximum of 30 days. To recover your deleted photos from Android phone for free from Dropbox, follow the steps below.
Step 1: Fire up your computer and visit Dropbox from the web browser.
Step 2: Use your credentials to log in.
Step 3: Select Files and then tap Deleted Files.
Step 4: Preview the files available in the Deleted Files folder and select the ones you would like to recover.
Solution 5: Recover Deleted Photos from Android Phone with Microsoft OneDrive
If you have Microsoft OneDrive on your Android device, there is a chance that your photos could be available on the cloud service. OneDrive, similar to Dropbox, stores your deleted pictures for 30 days before erasing them permanently. However, if the recycle bin exceeds 10% of the total storage space, the cloud storage service may delete the pictures sooner. Follow the steps below to learn how to recover deleted photos from Android phone for free from OneDrive:
Step 1: Launch the application.
Step 2: Select Me > Recycle Bin.
Step 3: Select the files you would like to get back.
Step 4: Finally click the Restore button.
Use a Computer Program to Undelete Photos from Gallery [Not Free]
The first thing you need to note about this solution is that you can’t use the computer software to recover your deleted photos from Android phone for free. While most computer data recovery programs do have a free trial version, to access the programs’ full features, you will have to pay.
There are numerous data recovery tools you can use. A simple search online should bring up these solutions. Before deciding to use a specific program, make sure that the program has nice comments from previous users. This is the only ideal way to make sure that the program can help you get your lost data back.
It is worth noting that desktop programs work in a similar manner as
FindMyPhoto. They will only have the ability to recover your data if the files are not yet overwritten. The main difference between computer programs and the app introduced in solution 1 above is that computer programs will store the recovered photos on your computer. Besides, almost all of them charge you a lot of money even for only recovering one photo, which is really not worth it.
In this case, FindMyPhoto stands out as a free photo recovery app for Android devices to recover deleted photos either from internal or external memory.
Summary
If you have lost some of your important photos, you shouldn’t get frustrated. You can always get the pictures back. All you will have to do is use a data recovery tool. We have introduced an Android data recovery tool in this article to recover deleted photos from Android phone for free. Apart from the tool being easy to use, it is free. If you do use cloud storage services on your Android device, you can use the steps outlined in this article to recover your lost photos from the cloud storage.
