How to Recover Videos Deleted from Google Photos

Google Photos, without a trace of doubt, is one of the best photo storage and management applications available right now. Plus, it comes with an intelligent AI (Artificial Intelligence) that can sort your photo and video files according to date, year, location, object, and even people. What’s more, if you delete your photos or videos accidentally, Google Photos will store them in “Bin” for 60 days, making file recovery effortless. But what if you have erased the videos even from the Bin, and now they are permanently deleted? In this article, we will discuss how to recover videos that were permanently deleted from Google Photos. Here we go!

Table of Contents

Two Cases of Removing Videos Within Google Photos

Before we get to the methods to recover videos deleted from Google Photos, you need to figure out exactly how they were erased in the first place. If you don’t find the removed video in the “Bin” of Google Photos, we can divide the video deletion into two separate issues:

The lost video had a backup in Google Drive, but it’s not available within the “Bin” feature now. In this case, the files have been permanently deleted from Google Drive.
Your videos were saved locally, on your phone, but you have erased them using Google Photos.

No matter which circumstances your lost videos were part of, they have been permanently erased now. Let’s see how you can restore your videos in each case.

Case 1: Recover Videos Deleted from Google Photos through Cloud Backup

If the erased videos from Google Photos were backed up to Google Drive at one point, you need to contact Customer Support for the product to recover them. Once you reach out to them and give the right details, they will aid with recovery in mere minutes.

Here’s how you can do it:

Go to the “Find or recover a file” Google Drive Support page. Make sure the Google account you open this page with is the same one you used for your Google Photos. If it’s not, switch to the correct Google account by clicking on the account picture in the top right corner of your screen.
Next, go to the bottom of the page and make sure the language is set to “English.” If it’s configured to “English (United Kingdom)” or other languages, you will not find the “Contact Us” button. Thus, change your language to “English” before you move forward.
After that, click the “Contact us” button under the “Need more help?” section.
Next, you need to fill in some details to move forward. Here’s how to proceed in this stage:
1. In the box under the “Tell us what you need help with” section, type “I want to recover permanently deleted files from Google Photos” and click on the “Next” button.
2. Next, in the “Confirm Issue” section, select the “Permanently deleted my file” box.
3. Now, scroll down and click on the “Next step” button.
4. In this step, you will find two contact options: Chat and Email. Click on the “Chat” option.
5. Now you need to confirm your name, Gmail account, your issues again, and click the “Submit” button.
Next, a small chat box will pop up in the bottom-right corner of your screen.
Once the Google Drive Specialist is available (in a few minutes, usually) and texts you, describe your issues and give them the details they ask for.
Next, the Google Drive Specialist will confirm your email and the type of document you want to recover. Furthermore, the Support Specialist will ask for some detail about your file to verify them.
Once you give the right details and give confirmation, it will take just a few minutes to retrieve the Google Photos deleted videos.

Act Urgently if Google Photos Chat Support is Unavailable

If the chat support is not open for some reason, please don’t wait and immediately contact the Google Drive Specialist via email. While it might take a couple of days to recover the files via email support, it’s still a better option than waiting for the chat support to come online. That’s because the longer you take to contact them after the permanent deletion of your videos, the harder it will be to rescue them. Moreover, after a certain period, video file recovery will be impossible even if you manage to get through to support.

Case 2: Recover Local Videos Wiped from Google Photos

You can easily rescue the video removed from within Google Photos by contacting customer support, as long as they were backed up to Google Drive before deletion. But what if they were just local videos of your smartphone you have erased using Google Photos? In this case, the solution of case 1 will never work.

Therefore, to facilitate the restoration of lost videos, you can use a third-party data recovery application. Let’s see how to do it.

Restore Using an Android Data Recovery App on Your Phone

Nowadays, many data recovery companies are introducing an Android version of their data restoration software and making it available on the Google Play Store. While they might not be as effective as the complete software package, these apps can still retrieve any deleted files with just a few taps. That includes the local videos gone from the Google Photos app.

Although you can choose any app on the Google Play Store to rescue video files, you should always choose one that comes from a reputable company. Still, since such Android apps work similarly, irrespective of the publisher, you can restore your lost videos following the steps below:

Download an app of your choice from the Google Play Store and launch it on your Android phone.
To scan and find deleted videos, you might need to root your Android phone first. If you don’t know how, you can follow XDA Developers’ phone rooting guide.
With rooting done (if necessary), tap the “Start Scan/Basic Scan” option in the app.
Once the scan is complete, it’s time to review all the recoverable videos and select them.
Tap on the “Recover” button, and all the files you selected will be sent to the location on your Android device you specified.

Retrieve Google Photos You Removed Using a Computer

Undoubtedly, the Android version of the applications for recovering data is quite useful. However, these applications might be unable to find and restore data as accurately and efficiently as the computer versions. Thus, if you had no luck with the Android apps, we advise you to try recovering the videos that were in Google Photos using data retrieval software for computers.

Here’s what you need to do:

First, download and install a professional data rescue application of your choice on your computer. Again, you must double-check the software is genuine, and hails from a reputed data recovery company.
Next, connect your Android device to your computer using a USB cable.
Now, launch the data restoration app on your computer.
Select the type of files you want to recover. In this case, we will select “Video” files.
Next, click the “Scan” or “Start Scan” option to begin the scouring process.
Once the scan is complete, all video files that can be rescued from your Android device will be available for review. Sift through them to zero in on those that were stored in Google Photos.
Choose the video files you would like to recover.
After that, click the “Recover” option to start the recovery process.

With this, you have now successfully rescued videos erased from Google Photos.