Recover Texts After iOS4 Update

I've read a lot of tweets today from people who upgraded their iPhone to iOS4 today and lost all of their text messages. For some people, even if the texts somehow didn't transfer to your new iOS4 backup file, you may have other backup files (from OS 3.1.3 or before) with some or all of your texts.  This is a quick writeup to show you how to find your iPhone backups, determine if you might have a useful backup that's recent, and a plug for our tool -- Decipher TextMessage -- that you can use to read the messages out of those backups.

(Update February 12, 2015: The free trial of Decipher TextMessage will automatically look for your iPhone backups made by iTunes. So, if you don't want to manually follow these steps to look at your backup dates, you can simply run the free trial of Decipher TextMessage and see what backups it finds!)

Step 1: Find your iPhone backup files

If you are on a Mac, you can find your backup folders in Home -> Application Support -> MobileSync -> Backup.  You can click on the image below to see how to find the Backup folder in Finder.

In Windows, your backup folders will be in C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup on XP or C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup on Windows 7 or Vista.

A quick way to get to this folder on Windows is the following:

Windows XP, Vista, and 7: Go to Start -> Run, and then type %appdata% (with the percents) into the Run dialog box. From there navigate to Apple Computer -> MobileSync -> Backup.

Windows 8: Open the Windows 8 Search and type %appdata% (with the percents) into the search box. Press enter. From the folder that opens, navigate to Apple Computer -> MobileSync -> Backup.

Step 2: Determine if you have any useful recent backups

By "useful" backups, we mean a backup folder created prior to your iOS4 update.  You can determine if the backup is from before iOS4 by looking at the folder contents.  If the files inside end in .mdinfo and .mddata as they do in the screenshot above, then the backup is from before iOS4.  If you own multiple iPhoneOS devices (iPad, iPod Touch, other iPhones), keep in mind that these backups may be from these devices.

If you have some pre-iOS4 backups, you should check the date on them to see if they're recent enough to be deemed useful to you (and the date stamp may help you figure out if they're from another device).

On a Mac, right-click (or ctrl-click) on the folder and click on "Get Info" -- you're interested in the folder's "Modified:" date, which will tell you when the backup was made.

On a PC, right-click on the folder and click "Properties" -- you're interested in the folder's "Modified:" date, which will tell you when the backup was made.

If the modified date convinces you that this backup is recent enough to be useful, that's great news!

Step 3: Get those texts off that backup!

On Mac and Windows PC, I recommend grabbing a copy of our Decipher TextMessage which will read the backup folders (both old and new) in your MobileSync -> Backup folder and present them in a nice user interface.

Even if you don't want to read the text messages right now, it's probably worth copying the backup folder to another location (I normally use the MobileSync folder), just so you know you have a copy in case the backup gets wiped-out by iTunes later.

Step 4: Celebrate! or Contact Us :)

Hopefully this tutorial worked out for you -- I'd hate to be suddenly without my massive history of texts.  Please feel free to contact us if you have concerns about the tutorial, or it didn't work for you.  Better yet, please contact us if it did work for you, because we'd love to hear about it!