How to Turn Off Auto Delete Old Conversations + Recover

Disabling Auto Delete

Open Settings. This is the cog icon. When this feature is set to anything other than Forever, it will permanently delete older messages. If needed, you can try to recover deleted messages.

Tap Apps. If you're using an older version of iOS, you can skip this step.

Tap Messages. This is next to the speech bubble icon.

Tap Keep Messages. You can find this towards the bottom of the page; you may need to scroll down to find it.

Tap Forever. Messages will no longer be deleted automatically from your device.

Recovering Deleted Messages

Check your Recently Deleted. If you want to recover messages deleted by this feature, you can try checking the Recently Deleted section. This feature is only available on iOS 16 and later. Open Messages. Tap Edit. Tap Show Recently Deleted. Tap the message. Tap Recover.

Revert to an older backup. If you want to recover deleted messages not found in your Recently Deleted, you can try restoring from a backup. If you have Messages enabled in iCloud, the changes may have already synced, and it's unlikely you'll be able to recover the messages.

Contact Apple. If the above methods don't work, you can try contacting Apple's support team for help in restoring your messages. You can contact Apple on their website at https://getsupport.apple.com/.