Photo Recovery

How to Retrieve Deleted Photos on Samsung Phones

Written By Sumona Chatterjee
Approved By Rohit Arora
Updated on 5 Jan, 2024
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Summary: This post shares the personal experience of one of my friends, who happened to lose her vacation photos from her Samsung S8 smartphone. She’s not a techie but loves to deep dive into her problems…You may find her story interesting (and relevant), as to how to recover deleted photos from samsung phones! ...Read on…

It was a huge mistake deleting photos from my Samsung Galaxy S23 Gallery. I wanted to make some space in my phone but the cleaning spree made me lose several of my precious photos. I didn’t realize the blunder until I began to look for last year’s family vacation in the S23 gallery…they were all gone.

I am sharing my story feeling that it helps you come through a similar situation and restore deleted photos back to your smartphone.

How to Recover Deleted Photos from Samsung Phones

What I didn’t know about Samsung phones

I frantically looked over the Internet to find (any) solution to Samsung Galaxy photo recovery.

What I found was a revelation…Samsung provides Samsung Cloud to save photos and other files, and you can access your Gallery and other data via the website also.

Helluva! I never noticed this in my Samsung Galaxy

So went on to recover deleted photos from Samsung Cloud.

How to find deleted photos on Samsung Cloud

As a Samsung phone user, I had 15GB of free storage on the Samsung Cloud. So, all my phone photos were saved there. The cloud has a Trash folder that keeps all the deleted image files for 15 days, from where I could restore them.

restored deleted photos from Samsung Cloud

Here’s what I did next:

Opened Settings on Samsung phone
Selected Samsung Cloud
Clicked Gallery
Clicked Trash
Selected the deleted photos, and clicked Restore

Samsung Cloud helped so far to recover photos that were removed within the past 15 days. However, I couldn’t restore many of the deleted photos on the Samsung S8 that were beyond this window.

Searching for alternatives, I came across a photo recovery software called Stellar Photo Recovery that claimed to recover deleted photos from Samsung Galaxy S23, S22, S21, and other Samsung Galaxy Phones. I decided to give it a shot as there seemed no other way out.

Here’s what I did:

Download the free trial of Stellar photo recovery software.
Connected my Samsung SD card to my laptop through a card reader
Launched the software

Selected the Samsung SD card and clicked Scan
Clicked Recover

Previewed the recovered files

I found that these were the photos I needed back

But, the free trial needed an activation key to save the photos, so I purchased one to save the photos on my laptop. It took me roughly 10 minutes to restore about 600 pics from my 16GB SD card. Worked like magic… felt happy.

Lessons learned: securing photos on Samsung phones

Backup is important:

When you buy a Samsung phone, turn on the Gallery app’s Auto Sync feature so that all your photos are automatically saved to Samsung Cloud.

Go to Settings > Samsung Cloud > Gallery. Toggle the slider to turn Sync On.

Use apps like Google Photos and ES File Explorer File Manager:

Google Photos is a photo-sharing and storage app. Permanently deleted photos from your Samsung mobile phone remain in the trash of Google Photos for 60 days. You can restore Samsung deleted photos from the app’s Trash on your phone.

ES File Explorer File Manager helps you to manage your Android phone data. All the deleted photos and other files go into its Recycle Bin under Tools. So, if you happen to delete photos from any Samsung phone, you can restore them from the Recycle Bin.

In all, backup along with good photo recovery software Should be enough for such contingencies. Samsung Cloud is fine but has its limitations. Try using Google Photos or ES File Explorer to get a more reliable backup. A Samsung phone photo recovery tool would help close in on any gaps and unsavory situations like it did for me.

You can try the free version of the Photo Recovery Software here:

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About The Author

Sumona Chatterjee

Sumona is a tech blogger, avid photographer, & technogeek with vast experience in writing about media file recovery tips and tutorials. She has over 10 years of experience in media file recovery/media file repair technology. She is passionate about Photography, Creative Designing, Music, and Exploring lesser-known destinations.

24 comments

Kartik says:

February 22, 2022 at 10:06 am

Hey! will your software work on any memory card? I have 10 year old galaxy phone with old Panasonic SD card from which I have to recover some photos.

Reply
1. Sumona Chatterjee says:
  
  February 24, 2022 at 9:39 am
  
  Hi Kartik, Stellar Photo Recovery is capable of recovering your seemingly lost photos and media files from damaged/corrupted / inaccessible memory card, SD Card (Mini, Micro, SDHC, and SDXC), memory stick, compact flash, CF card, CFast, SmartMedia, MultiMediaCard, & all other flash cards. The software supports all SD card models of Samsung, SanDisk, Transcend, Lexar, Toshiba, Panasonic, Kingston, and others.
  To recover your photos from the Panasonic SD card, you can try our software.
  
  Reply
Sharon Moran says:

November 25, 2020 at 8:03 pm

Please help! 3 days ago, I accidentally ERASED everything photos , texts, contacts… on my samsung galaxy A50. I’m trying to restore my pictures. Is deleting the same as erasing? I had to initialize my phone from the beginning and I’m not at all technically inclined. When I bought the phone, i purchased an sd card. Can you recommend how best to get my pictures back? Thank you!

Reply
1. Sumona Chatterjee says:
  
  November 26, 2020 at 11:56 am
  
  Hi Sharon, I would suggest you to try our free software, Stellar Data Recovery for Android, which easily recovers deleted or lost pictures from your phone’s internal memory storage. For SD card, you need to connect the card through an SD card reader on your computer and try our photo recovery software, which helps to get back all pictures and videos from your SD card. Thanks!
  
  Reply
Jane says:

July 22, 2020 at 4:57 am

Hi
I have just tried to download the software but it will not open on my computer so I am not able to see if I can retrieve my photos. Is there something else I can do to get it to run? Thanks

Reply
1. Nishat Paiker says:
  
  July 22, 2020 at 11:35 am
  
  Hi Jane, You can first uninstall and then reinstall the software on your computer, using the given link:
  If you have Windows PC then copy & paste this link in your browser – Download Link
  If you use Mac, then use – Download Link
  
  For more information, you can contact our support through email support[@]stellarinfo.com or call at: +1-877-778-6087.
  
  Reply
Riz says:

April 19, 2020 at 6:35 pm

Hi Sumona
I accidentally deleted my photos from the Gallery in my Samsung 10+. I tried to retrieve but nothing came back pls kindly advice how to get my picture and other items from my pic Gallery.
Thank you very much.

Reply
1. Sumona Chatterjee says:
  
  April 20, 2020 at 12:05 pm
  
  Hi Riz,
  Did you check in Samsung Cloud? You can also try Stellar Photo Recovery software to recover photos from your mobile SD card. Thanks!
  
  Reply
Chris Francis says:

December 26, 2019 at 10:31 am

I had the same situation deleted some important photos, videos or text messages from Samsung Galaxy S8, Thanks for providing the useful steps to get deleted photos from Samsung Cloud.

Reply
1. Sumona Chatterjee says:
  
  December 27, 2019 at 10:38 am
  
  Hi Chris, Thanks for reading our blog and sharing your valuable feedback with us!
  
  Reply
Simon Stich says:

November 18, 2019 at 10:47 am

Hi Sumona, I had an issue with Samsung S8 when I update the phone get error message “couldn’t open connection to server”. How to fix it? Any solution please help

Reply
1. Sumona Chatterjee says:
  
  November 19, 2019 at 3:08 am
  
  Hi Simon, Please follow the steps to fix this problem,
  1. Go to the settings > connections>
  2. Click more connection settings > reset network connection
  This will solve the problem, but you will have to reenter your Wi-Fi passwords and re-sync all your Bluetooth connections. Thanks!
  
  Reply
Craig Angell says:

October 31, 2019 at 9:44 am

I had recently purchased note 10+, but unfortunately my albums disappeared of my gallery, i didn’t deleted it. Can I retrieve the photo album? Please help!

Reply
1. Sumona Chatterjee says:
  
  October 31, 2019 at 2:49 am
  
  Hi Craig, I would like to suggest if the photos deleted from the phone SD card our software help to recover your photos from the SD card. For more information, you can contact our support through email support[@]stellarinfo.com or call at +1-877-778-6087.
  
  Reply
Amalie Schou says:

September 17, 2019 at 2:20 am

Hi Sumona, why my all photos disappeared? When I open my Samsung phone in the morning found gallery is completely empty. I tried to get back photos with the help of Google drive but all photo weren’t backup. Any suggestion would be appreciation!

Reply
1. Sumona Chatterjee says:
  
  September 19, 2019 at 10:51 am
  
  Hi Amalie, I would suggest you can try our software demo version on your Samsung SD card and see the preview of recovered lost or deleted files. Thanks!
  
  Reply
Michael Waters says:

July 22, 2019 at 10:53 am

I had the accidently deleted some of vacation photos from my Samsung Evo Plus on my Samsung phone. I didn’t know the recovery is possible after reading your blog I successfully recovered my photos from Samsung SD card. Thank you very much!

Reply
1. Sumona Chatterjee says:
  
  July 29, 2019 at 5:15 am
  
  Glad to found it helpful name! More is on the way.
  
  Reply
Marko Espinosa says:

June 13, 2019 at 10:19 am

I Accidently deleted my pictures about 2 months from my Android Phone. I finding the way to restore my photo and I found your recovery programs on Internet that might work on my phone SD card. Thank you very much!

Reply
1. Sumona Chatterjee says:
  
  June 18, 2019 at 2:32 am
  
  Hi Marko, Thank you for choosing our software!
  
  Reply