How to read deleted WhatsApp messages and recover them on Android
WhatsApp is one of the most widely used instant messaging services across the globe. Whether you’re texting a friend or creating a group chat with members of your family, WhatsApp is generally the preferred app since almost everyone uses it. Due to its popularity, WhatsApp has been introducing several new features to the platform including multi-device support and more recently, disappearing messages.
Quite some time back, WhatsApp added the ability to delete sent messages before the receiver read them. This can be useful if you made an error while typing the message or sent a message to the wrong contact. But this can also have the opposite effect on the receiver, making them more curious than usual in figuring out what was sent in the first place. While WhatsApp doesn’t officially let you read deleted messages, there’s a workaround that we’re going to discuss today. We’re going to tell you how to read deleted WhatsApp messages on your phone.
Note that this workaround only works on Android smartphones and will not work on iOS. We will be using a third-party app for this trick and the app will have notification access. This is NOT an official method and the app is in no way affiliated to WhatsApp. Notification access is also a very wide and potentially intrusive permission to grant to an app, so please be very thorough about your needs before you go ahead and grant the app such access.
How to Read Deleted WhatsApp Messages
Given that WhatsApp chats are end-to-end encrypted, there’s no way to actually recover a deleted message. The workaround is to use an app that keeps track of your WhatsApp notifications. This is more like accessing your notification history to figure out the deleted message. It works almost flawlessly though and I’ve been using it for over a year now without any issues. It even works with WhatsApp Business and other messaging apps like Instagram and Telegram. Here’s how you can read and recover deleted messages on WhatsApp:
Head to the Play Store and install WAMR on your phone. There are several apps that do the job but this is one that I’ve personally used for a while.
Once installed, open the app and read and accept the disclaimer. Tap on the Next arrow.
You’ll then be asked to select the apps you want to monitor. Select WhatsApp from the list along with any other messaging apps that you use if you want to.
Read through and keep swiping right across the menus till you get to the Setup screen. Here, tap on Enable next to Notification Reader.
You will now be redirected to your phone’s Settings app to grant notification access. Scroll down to find WAMR and tap on it.
Now, tap on the toggle next to Allow notification access and tap on Allow again.
Once you’ve granted access, go back to the WAMR app and tap on the Next arrow.
That’s pretty much it. You now have a service that stores your WhatsApp notification history. If someone deleted a message they sent you, WAMR will notify you, and you can read the message by tapping on the notification.
Some phones tend to have aggressive RAM management which kills the WAMR process running in the background. We would recommend keeping the app running in the background at all times to prevent this from happening.
When someone sends you a message, WAMR stores the contents of the message from the notification that you get on your phone. That way, even if someone deletes a message, the contents of the message are already stored in WAMR via the notification and you can access it.
Since this is a workaround, there are certain limitations. If you have muted some contacts and they delete a message sent to you, you will not be able to recover it since notifications for muted contacts are disabled. If you have disabled media auto-download on WhatsApp, WAMR will not be able to save deleted media files. It will also not work if the message deleted was sent to you while your phone was not connected to the internet since you wouldn’t have received a notification.
If you can live with these shortcomings, this is a great way to read deleted WhatsApp messages and satisfy your curiosity! We would still recommend exercising your own discretion when choosing to use such apps.
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