Find deleted iPhone note

May 7, 2024 5:44 PM

I have accidentally deleted an important note in my iPhone Notes app - it must have been more than three months ago as it is not in the "Recently Deleted" folder. I backup my phone onto my laptop via iTunes (no cloud backup) - is there a hidden iTunes file or folder on my laptop somewhere where I can find my last Notes backup?

I guess could restore my phone from the last iTunes backup but that would overwrite anything I have saved on my phone since then...

posted by Naanwhal to Technology (4 answers total)

My notes are mirrored in Gmail, and I don’t recall doing anything to make that happen. Do you have a Gmail account connected to your phone? Have you checked there? For me it’s under Labels.
posted by sacrifix at 5:57 PM on May 7, 2024

Do you have access to another computer? You could make a new, full backup of your phone. Then, restore from the old backup that hopefully has the note. Then email that note to yourself (or some other way of getting the information), then re-restore from the new backup.
posted by Night_owl at 7:01 PM on May 7, 2024

Best answer: I think iMazing will let you extract individual items from backups, maybe even using the trial version (it looks like the trial version lets you extract up to 10 files from backups).

I use iMazing for other reasons, and I really like it. If you get a chance to try it, let us know if the trial helped you get your note back.
posted by kristi at 7:17 PM on May 7, 2024 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks so much kristi, the iMazing trial version did exactly what I needed!

My next option would have been Night_owl's suggestion as I do not use gmail.
posted by Naanwhal at 8:47 PM on May 10, 2024 [1 favorite]