Forum Discussion
Look for the best iphone backup extractor to retrieve deleted data
Don't use iTunes as it is not a good iPhone backup extractor. Pls use a dedicated tool instead. They can help you easily extract content from iTunes backup on Windows or Mac.
I am using this one for years: https://www.uuwinfox.com/restore-iphone-from-backup
The good news is, what you're looking for actually exists. It's hiding in developer forums and GitHub repositories, not in fancy software ads. Let's do this completely free, using only open-source tools you can run from the command line.
1. Find Your Backup
Open Command Prompt. The backup folder is hidden, but you can get there instantly with this:
bash
cd %APPDATA%\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup
dir
That will show you a folder with a long, scary name (like 2b6f0cc84d67f4f3d6b4da15c23a6b9ec44e42d2). That's your iPhone backup. The fact that you need to use a command to find it.
2. Grab the Right Tools
You need two free, command-line based tools to make this work.
Python: If you don't have it, download it from python,org. Make sure to check "Add Python to PATH" during install.
iOS Backup Extractor Tools: Open Command Prompt and run this:
bash
pip install iosbackup
This installs a Python library specifically designed to read encrypted and unencrypted iOS backups. It's completely free and open-source.
3. Extract the Data Via the best iphone backup extractor tool
Navigate to your backup folder in the terminal. Then, to get your messages (including deleted ones), you'd write a tiny Python script or use pre-made community scripts.
For example, using the iosbackup library to just look around:
python
from iosbackup import Backup
backup = Backup("PATH_TO_YOUR_BACKUP_FOLDER")
manifest = backup,read_manifest()
for file in manifest,files:
print(file,filename) # This lists every file in the backup
There are also ready-to-go Perl and Python scripts on GitHub (like joz-k/ ios_ backup _extractor or jsharkey13/iphone _backup decrypt) where you just run python extract,py backup folder and it dumps everything to a folder.
4. Read the Deleted Data
Once extracted, the texts are usually in an SQLite database (sms,db). You can open this directly in any command-line SQL browser or even by dragging the file into a Firefox browser extension (just as a viewer). The deleted messages are still in that database.