How to recover deleted photos and videos from Xiaomi phone

Accidentally deleting important photos or videos is one of the most common and frustrating situations faced by smartphone owners. Owners of Xiaomi, Redmi and Poco devices often wonder whether lost data can be recovered if it disappeared from the gallery. Fortunately, the Android operating system and the proprietary shell MIUI (or HyperOS) provide several layers of protection and rollback mechanisms.

Before panicking and chaotic actions begin, you need to clearly understand where the file was moved and how long ago it happened. The chances of successful recovery depend on the time elapsed since the deletion and whether the memory cell was overwritten with new data. In this article, we will look at all the available ways to return media, from the regular tools of the system to the use of specialized software.

It is important to act quickly and consistently to avoid making things worse, and we will look at both the standard Recycle Bin folders and cloud services that could automatically save your pictures without your knowledge, and we will also look at the specifics of the file system of modern smartphones.

Checking the standard basket in the MIUI Gallery

The first and easiest place to look is the built-in Recycle Bin folder in the Gallery app, where in modern versions of the MIUI and HyperOS shell, deleted files are not permanently erased immediately, but moved to a special clipboard, where they are stored for 30 days, after which the system automatically clears the space.

To get into this section, you need to open the Gallery app and go to the Albums tab. Scroll down to the very end, where you will find the Deleted item. This displays all photos and videos that have been manually deleted by the user but have not yet gone through the full cleanup cycle.

⚠️ Attention: Files in the Recycle Bin take up space in the phone's memory.If you deleted a 2GB video, it will still take up those 2GB on your device until you clear the Recycle Bin definitively.

To recover a particular image, just click on it, select Restore from the bottom menu or through the context menu. The file will return to its original album with the shooting date and metadata saved. If you want to return everything at once, use the "Select All" button and confirm the action.

Use of the Mi Cloud cloud service

Xiaomi account owners often forget that they may have been activated sync with the branded Mi Cloud, which automatically backs up gallery, contacts and notes, and even if you deleted a photo from your phone, a copy of it could have stayed on the server.

Check for backups through your browser on your computer or any other device. Go to the official i.mi.com website and log in to your Mi Account. From the cloud storage interface, select the Gallery section.

This shows all the synchronized images. If you find the right photo, highlight it and press the restore button. Also, the web interface has its own folder, Deleted, which works independently of the shopping cart on the phone. The storage life of deleted files in the cloud is usually up to 30 days for free accounts.

It is important to note that for this feature to work on the phone, the gallery sync option must be enabled in the account settings. If sync was disabled at the time of shooting or deleting, this method, alas, will not help.

Recovery via Google Photos and Google Drive

Because Xiaomi smartphones run on Android, they are deeply integrated with Google’s ecosystem.The Google Photos app is often installed by default or downloaded by the user to improve the quality of image processing.It also has its own independent shopping cart.

Open the Google Photos app, click on your profile avatar in the top right corner, and select Recycle Bin. This is where files are stored for up to 60 days if you use a Google One subscription, or up to 30 days for regular users. Recovery is similar: file selection and click Recover.

Also worth checking out is Google Drive. Some users have set up automatic uploading of important documents or photos there. The Disk interface also has a Recycle Bin section in the side menu where deleted files lie for 30 days.

• 📸 Open the Google Photos app on your device.
• 🗑️ Go to the Library. → Basket.
• ⏳ Choose a photo or video that you want to return.
• ✅ Click Restore and the file will return to the phone gallery.

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Check the Autoupload settings in Google Photos, and your photos may have been saved to the Google cloud in original or compressed quality, even if you forgot about it.

Analysis of local folders and hidden copies

Sometimes users delete photos from the main album without knowing that some apps (such as messengers or editors) create their own copies of files. Android file system allows applications to create duplicates in their directories.

Use the built-in Explorer or Files app. Go to the root folder of the device and look at the DCIM directory. Inside, you can have.thumbnails folders or application-specific caches. While there may not be a full-size photo, the thumbnail is often of sufficient quality to identify the image.

Also worth checking is the folders of messengers: Android/media/com.whatsapp or MIUI/gallery/cloud. Sometimes edited versions of photos are saved separately from the originals. Searching the extension.jpg or.mp4 sorted by date of change can help find surviving copies.

Use of specialized software for PC

If standard methods do not work, you can resort to using third-party software to recover data, programs such as DiskDigger, Recuva (through memory card emulation), or Dr.Fone scan the device's memory for residual file records.

To work most of these utilities on the Xiaomi smartphone requires the enabled debugging mode over USB. To activate it, go to Settings → About phone and quickly click on the version number of MIUI seven times. Then the menu “Advanced settings” will appear “For developers”, where you need to activate the switch “Debugging by USB”.

Connect your phone to your computer with a cable and run the scan in the program. The process can take anywhere from 10 minutes to several hours depending on the amount of memory. It is important to understand that without Root rights, the scan depth will be limited only to the available partitions of memory where the user has direct access.

⚠️ Note: Installing recovery software directly on your phone can lead to the overwriting of deleted data with new software.

Once scanned, the program will show you a list of files that have been found, and those that are labeled "Good" or have a full preview will probably be able to recover them, and save the files that you find to your computer's hard drive, not back to your phone.

Prevention of data loss and setting up a backup

To avoid future loss of staff, you need to set up automatic backups, and the best strategy is the 3-2-1 rule: three copies of data, on two different media, one of which is located elsewhere (the cloud).

For Xiaomi users, it is optimal to sync with Mi Cloud for mission-critical photos and enable autoloading in Google Photos using the Save Space feature, which will create a dual insurance policy.

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Automatic synchronization is the only guaranteed way to protect against accidental removal or breakage of the device.

Check regularly if sync is working. Sometimes, after updating the system or changing the password of the account, the automatic download may turn off, and it is also recommended to periodically make a full copy of the data to the computer via the Mi PC Suite or simply copying the DCIM folder manually.

• ☁️ Set up Mi Cloud to sync system albums.
• 🔄 Enable autoload in Google Photos in original quality.
• 💾 Copy the photo archive to an external hard drive once a month.
• 🔒 Regularly check the status of the account connection in the settings.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)