Recovering deleted photos from an earlier iPhone backup

hello! accidentally deleted important photos from my iPhone, and from Recently Deleted folder as well. After deleting these photos, a new backup of my iPhone was created. Can I go back to an earlier backup where these photos were not yet deleted?



[Re-Titled by Moderator]

iPhone 8

Posted on Oct 26, 2025 12:05 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Oct 26, 2025 12:35 PM

You cannot. Backups to iCloud will overwrite the previous one. If that was not the case, your iCloud data would quickly fill up to save those backups and likely requires a subscription just to have those backups saved.


The only way to archive a backup so you could go back to a previous version is to use a computer to backup that data.


If you use iCloud Photos, none of those photos are stored in a backup file, and that also includes any other data that is synced to iCloud. For data synced to iCloud, you would need to export that data to an external drive if you want an extra copy in case they are deleted. All iCloud data uses the Recently Deleted folder to give you the option to recover for 30 days. There is no need to delete from the Recently Deleted folder unless you truly want those to be permanently deleted before the 30 days.

1 reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Oct 26, 2025 12:35 PM in response to may_q1

You cannot. Backups to iCloud will overwrite the previous one. If that was not the case, your iCloud data would quickly fill up to save those backups and likely requires a subscription just to have those backups saved.


The only way to archive a backup so you could go back to a previous version is to use a computer to backup that data.


If you use iCloud Photos, none of those photos are stored in a backup file, and that also includes any other data that is synced to iCloud. For data synced to iCloud, you would need to export that data to an external drive if you want an extra copy in case they are deleted. All iCloud data uses the Recently Deleted folder to give you the option to recover for 30 days. There is no need to delete from the Recently Deleted folder unless you truly want those to be permanently deleted before the 30 days.

Recovering deleted photos from an earlier iPhone backup

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