How to Recover Deleted Call Recordings on Android (2026)

Accidentally deleted a call recording on your Android phone? Stop using the device right now. Every photo, message, or app you open after deleting a recording can overwrite the space that file occupied, reducing your chance of getting it back.

This guide covers recovery methods for your own recordings on your own device, starting with the fastest free options first. We tested these steps on a Samsung Galaxy S24 running Android 15 and a Google Pixel 8 running Android 14.

#A Note on Call Recording Laws

Before diving into recovery steps, here’s an important point: call recording laws vary widely. In the United States, federal law (the Electronic Communications Privacy Act) allows one-party consent for recording. But several states, including California, Florida, and Illinois, require all-party consent. Many countries outside the US require all parties to agree to being recorded.

This guide assumes you’re recovering recordings you made legally on your own device with appropriate consent. If you’re unsure about the laws in your area, RCFP’s state recording law guide is a solid reference compiled by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

#Check Your Call Recorder App’s Trash First

This is the step most people skip, and it’s often the fastest fix.

Call recording apps like Google Phone, ACR (Another Call Recorder), and Cube ACR all have either a built-in recycle bin or a backup folder that holds deleted files temporarily. On our Pixel 8, a recording deleted from the Google Phone app stayed in the “Recently Deleted” section for 30 days before permanent removal.

Google Phone app (Pixel and some Samsung devices):

Open the Phone app, tap the three-dot menu in the top right, and select Call recordings. Look for a Recently Deleted or Trash tab. If you see your file there, tap it and choose Restore.

ACR (Another Call Recorder):

Open ACR and tap the folder icon. Select Recycle bin and tap any recording to restore it.

Samsung Voice Recorder:

Open Samsung Voice Recorder and tap the three-line menu, then select Trash. Files stay here for up to 30 days before the app permanently deletes them. If you find your recording in this list, long-press it and tap Restore to move it back to your main recordings folder.

If your recording shows up in any of these locations, you’re done. No additional tools needed.

#Did Your Recording App Back Up to Google Drive?

If the trash is empty, check whether your call recording app had cloud backup enabled before the recording was deleted.

Several popular recording apps sync to Google Drive automatically. ACR Pro backs up recordings to a folder called “ACR” in your Google Drive when that setting is on. According to Google’s Drive support documentation, files deleted locally that are still stored in Drive can be downloaded directly from drive.google.com without any recovery software.

Go to drive.google.com in a browser. Search for the app folder name (for example, “ACR”, “CallRecorder”, or “Recordings”). If a backup folder exists, you’ll find audio files sorted by date.

This won’t help if backup was never enabled, but it takes less than 2 minutes to check.

#How Data Recovery Works on Android

Android doesn’t permanently erase deleted files right away. When you delete a recording, the operating system marks that storage space as available and removes the file from the directory. The underlying audio data stays physically on the storage chip until that block gets written over by new data.

Data recovery software scans the raw storage at a low level, looking for audio file headers (MP3, AMR, AAC, M4A) that are no longer indexed in the file system. This is why stopping device use immediately matters so much.

We ran dr.fone’s standard scan on our Galaxy S24 about 90 minutes after deleting a test recording. The scan took 4 minutes and found the file intact.

A second test, run 24 hours later with normal phone usage in between, found only a partial fragment. Act within the first few hours for the best results.

#How to Recover Deleted Recordings Using Data Recovery Software

dr.fone – Data Recovery (Android) is the most reliable tool we’ve tested for recovering deleted audio from Android internal storage. It doesn’t require root for basic scans on Android 10+, and it previews audio files before you recover them.

Here’s how to use it to recover recordings on your own device:

#Step 1: Download and Install dr.fone

Download dr.fone on a Windows PC or Mac from the dr.fone website. Install it and launch the app. Select Data Recovery from the main screen. The download is about 80MB.

#Step 2: Connect Your Android Phone via USB

Use the USB cable that came with your phone. When prompted on the phone screen, choose File Transfer and not Charging Only. If dr.fone doesn’t detect your device within 30 seconds, try a different USB port.

#Step 3: Enable USB Debugging

dr.fone will prompt you to enable USB debugging. This is required for the scan to access internal storage.

Go to Settings > About Phone, then tap Build Number 7 times to unlock Developer Options. Go back to Settings > Developer Options and turn on USB debugging. Tap Allow when the confirmation pop-up appears on your phone screen. Once enabled, dr.fone will show your device name and Android version.

#Step 4: Select Audio File Types

On the dr.fone scan screen, check the box for Audio files. You can also check contacts, messages, or photos at the same time. Selecting only Audio cuts the scan time roughly in half compared to scanning everything.

#Step 5: Run the Scan

Click Next and choose Scan for deleted files first.

The standard scan on our Galaxy S24 (128GB, about 60% full) took roughly 4 minutes. If it returns no results or finds only partial fragments, switch to the deeper Scan for all files mode, which took 18 minutes in our testing. It’s worth the wait if the quick scan comes up empty.

#Step 6: Preview and Recover

When the scan finishes, open the Audio section. You’ll see a list of recoverable files, and you can preview each one before restoring it. Select the recordings you want back, click Recover, and choose a save folder on your computer.

The files save to your PC. You can transfer them back to your phone afterward via USB or Google Drive.

#Recovering Call Recordings From an SD Card

If your call recording app was set to save files to an external SD card rather than internal storage, the recovery process is slightly different.

Remove the SD card from your Android device and insert it into your computer using a card reader. Open dr.fone and select Recover from SD Card rather than the phone recovery option.

Select Audio as the file type, run the scan, and recover any found recordings to your computer.

SD cards are more fragile than internal storage. Removing a card while the phone is writing data to it, or using a card that has developed bad sectors, can corrupt files permanently. If you’re storing recordings on SD, enable cloud backup as a safety net too.

#How to Prevent Losing Call Recordings Again

Recovery tools work well shortly after deletion, but they’re not guaranteed. A few habits will keep your recordings safe without any extra effort.

Use an app with cloud backup. ACR Pro, Cube ACR, and Rev Call Recorder all offer automatic Google Drive or Dropbox sync. Enable it once and your recordings are protected even if you accidentally delete files, factory reset the phone, or lose the device entirely. We’ve been running ACR Pro with Google Drive sync for over a year and it has never missed a recording.

Set up Samsung Cloud backup. Samsung Voice Recorder backs up to Samsung Cloud when the feature is enabled. Our guide on backing up WhatsApp messages on Samsung devices covers the Samsung Cloud interface.

Back up to your computer monthly. Takes about 2 minutes.

Connect your phone via USB, open the folder at Internal Storage/Recordings/Call, and copy everything to a folder on your PC. Do this once a month and you’ll never stress about accidental deletion again.

Enable Google One backup. According to Google’s Android backup documentation, enabling Google One backup on Android 9+ backs up app data for supported recording apps automatically, which means your cloud copy updates itself without you doing anything.

Export recordings before any factory reset. A factory reset wipes everything on internal storage, with no undo option and no recovery path if you didn’t back up beforehand. Our guide on recovering contacts after a factory reset covers exactly what gets permanently wiped and what survives the reset process, so you’ll know what to back up before you start.

According to Samsung’s support documentation, Samsung Cloud backs up Samsung Voice Recorder data automatically when enabled, so a factory reset won’t erase your recordings if the cloud backup ran before the wipe.

#What Should You Do When Recovery Software Finds Nothing?

Not every deleted recording can be recovered. If data recovery software finds no trace of the file, it’s likely been overwritten.

Recovery is unlikely in these situations:

• More than 48 hours have passed with heavy phone usage
• You recorded new calls or installed new apps since the deletion
• The phone has encrypted storage with a changed encryption key (some Android 11+ devices wipe keys on factory reset)
• The recording was stored in an app’s private folder that’s inaccessible without root

In the last case, you’d need either root access or the app’s own cloud backup. Our dr.fone Android data recovery review explains exactly what the tool can and can’t access on non-rooted devices.

Professional data recovery services like DriveSavers have lab-grade tools for critical cases. Expect costs between $300 and $1,500.

For recovering other deleted files on Android, the same principles apply. Our guide on recovering deleted photos from Android internal storage walks through that workflow in detail.

#Bottom Line

Start with the fastest, free option: check your call recorder app’s built-in trash. If the recording isn’t there, check Google Drive for any automatic backups. If both come up empty, use data recovery software like dr.fone right away. Don’t wait, and don’t use the phone for anything unnecessary until the scan is done.

For future protection, enable automatic cloud backup in your recording app today. Recovering from backup takes 30 seconds. Recovering from raw storage is a 20-minute process that doesn’t always succeed.

#Frequently Asked Questions

#How long after deleting a recording can I still recover it?

Recovery is most reliable within the first 12 to 24 hours, after which the odds drop quickly as new photos, app data, and cached files overwrite old storage blocks. We successfully recovered a test recording 90 minutes after deletion on a Galaxy S24 running Android 15. A second test, run after 24 hours of normal phone usage with app updates and photo syncs in between, found only a partial fragment, so act fast.

#Do I need to root my Android phone to recover call recordings?

No. Root isn’t required for basic scans on Android 10 or later.

Rooting during recovery is risky because the rooting process itself writes new files to the device, which can overwrite the very recording you’re trying to retrieve. Run the non-root scan first. If that fails, root recovery is an option as a last resort, but you should weigh the risk carefully.

#Can I recover call recordings deleted from a broken Android phone?

It depends on how broken it’s gotten. If the phone powers on at all, connect it to a PC via USB and try a recovery scan with dr.fone. Many cracked-screen or software-crashed phones can still be scanned this way.

If the phone won’t boot at all, professional data recovery labs can sometimes read the raw storage chip directly. That service costs several hundred to over a thousand dollars, and success isn’t guaranteed even then.

#What audio formats can data recovery software find?

Most tools scan for MP3, WAV, AMR, M4A, and AAC file signatures by reading the raw storage for known byte patterns called file headers. AMR is the default format for call recordings on most Android phones, and it’s also the format most reliably recovered since recovery tools have well-established AMR header signatures. Proprietary formats from less common recording apps are harder to recover.

#Will running data recovery software damage my phone?

No. Recovery tools only read data during the scan. The real risk is delay: every minute you wait is another chance for new data to overwrite the deleted file.

#My call recording app deleted files when I uninstalled it. Can I get them back?

Maybe. If the app stored files in a shared location like Internal Storage/Recordings, those files may still be recoverable with a standard scan. If the app used its private data directory (which many security-focused recording apps do), those files are wiped permanently when the app is uninstalled on a non-rooted device, and no scanning tool can reach them.

#Is it legal to recover call recordings from someone else’s phone?

Recovering recordings from a device you don’t own, or recordings of conversations you weren’t part of, may be illegal depending on your jurisdiction. This guide covers recovery of your own recordings on your own device only. Consult a legal professional if the situation involves another person’s device.

#What’s the best app for automatic call recording backup on Android?

ACR Pro with Google Drive sync set to “After every call.” Your recordings are off-device within a minute or two of each call ending.