By Philip Michaels

February 11, 2026 9:00 AM PT

Here’s how to recover deleted iPhone photos, Joel McHale

Sometimes I can’t help myself.

The other day, while watching an episode of “Animal Control”¹, I realized that I have been writing about technology so long that I can’t even turn off my brain to stop from shouting troubleshooting advice at the made-up people on my TV during a half-hour of light comedy.

Here’s the scenario: Our hero, Seattle Animal Control Office Frank Shaw (expertly played by Joel McHale), has been roped into ferrying around his arch-nemesis, a Cesar Millan-esque dog whisperer played by guest star Ken Jeong. (Kudos to you if you immediately picked up on this mini-“Community” reunion.) Joel McHale’s character has recorded a video on his phone of Ken Jeong having an encounter with an aggressive dog that will cause the latter no small amount of professional and personal embarrassment.

Ken Jeong manages to guilt Joel McHale into deleting the video from his phone by spinning a sob story that (if you know the kinds of characters Ken Jeong plays) is completely made up. But Joel McHale falls for it and deletes the video, only to have Ken Jeong turn the tables and cause McHale no small amount of professional and personal embarrassment. Joel McHale is left to fume about his missed opportunity.

“There’s gotta be a way to recover lost footage,” he says, while impotently turning his phone’s flashlight on.

And where other people might chuckle at this little interlude, a person in my position finds himself shouting at the screen, “There is! There is, you big galoot!” as if Joel McHale is going to answer back.

We do not have to guess as to what phone Joel McHale’s character is using — it is very clearly an iPhone. Given the camera array that I spotted when reviewing the footage with the same frame-by-frame intensity that JFK conspiracy theorists study the Zapruder film, I’d suggest that it’s an iPhone 16 Pro, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is, Frank is using a recent iPhone, so we’ll assume the on-board software is relatively up-to-date.

Everybody who’s used any piece of tech for any length of time knows that nothing’s truly deleted — at least not right away. In the case of photos and videos that you remove from your iPhone, by default they sit in a folder for 30 days before they disappear completely.

In the case of this particular “Animal Control” episode, all Frank would have to do to get that damning video back would be to fire up the Photos app on his iPhone, tap on the Collections tab and find the Recently Deleted folder tucked away in the Utilities section. Frank would tap on the deleted video, select Recover, and sit back and smile while that nasty Ken Jeong finally gets what’s coming to him.

Near as I can tell, there’s no way to disable the Recently Deleted folder feature so that deleted photos and videos go directly to that big trash can in the sky, nor is there a way to extend the stay of execution beyond those 30 days.

Frank could also avoid these kind of situations altogether by backing up his photos and videos to a third-party cloud service. (iCloud wouldn’t work in this case, as deleting things off your phone removes them from Apple’s syncing service.) But considering his tendency to repeatedly turn on his iPhone’s flashlight, that might be a backup best practice beyond his skill set.

[Philip Michaels has been writing about technology since 1999, most notably for Macworld and Tom’s Guide. He currently finds himself between jobs, so if you need someone who can string a few sentences together (or make your sentences read a lot better), drop him a line.]

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