Stop using the phone for photographs for a moment, and check the easy places first. Most deleted pictures are not gone at all.
The recently deleted folder
Both Android and iPhone keep deleted photos for about 30 days before really removing them.
- Google Photos: open the app, tap Library, then Trash or Bin. Anything in there can be put back with one tap.
- Samsung Gallery: open the app, tap the menu, then Trash.
- iPhone Photos: tap Albums, scroll to the bottom, then Recently Deleted. On newer iPhones this folder is locked and asks for your face or fingerprint.
If the picture is there, tap Restore and you are finished.
Check the other places it might exist
A photograph is often in more than one place without you realising.
- Did you send it to anyone on WhatsApp? Open that chat and look. The copy in the chat survives even when the gallery copy is gone.
- Are you backing up to Google Photos? Open photos.google.com on a computer and sign in. The phone copy and the cloud copy are separate, and deleting on the phone does not always delete in the cloud straight away.
- Was it a screenshot you posted somewhere, or a profile picture, or something you emailed to yourself?
If the 30 days have passed
Be careful here, because this is where people get hurt.
When a photo is properly deleted, the space it used is marked as free. The picture is still physically on the storage until something else writes over that space. So two things matter:
- Use the phone as little as possible. Every new photo, app update and WhatsApp download makes it more likely the old data is overwritten.
- Do not install a recovery app from an advert. This category is full of apps that show you blurred thumbnails of your own photos and then demand payment, and some are worse than that. A recovery app needs deep access to your storage, which is exactly what you would not want to hand to a stranger.
No website can recover a deleted photo from your phone. Any site that asks you to upload something, or to enter your Google password to get your pictures back, is a phishing page. Close it.
The honest position on Android is that real recovery from internal storage usually needs the phone rooted, which is a bigger and riskier operation than most photographs are worth. If the pictures were on a memory card, your chances are much better: take the card out, put it in a computer with a card reader, and use recovery software on the computer, where you can see what you are running.
What to do afterwards
Turn on backup today so the next deletion is a thirty-second problem instead of this one. The backup guide is short.