Why isn’t recently deleted showing up in my messages

Hello terk208,

Welcome to Apple Support Communities. Thanks for reaching out to us from the related article: Delete and recover messages on your iPhone or iPad

From Messages, tap Filters in the upper left corner. On the following page, Recently Deleted will show at the bottom of the list.

Let us know if you have any questions.

Have a great day!

1) iOS 16 must be installed on your phone

2) The message must have been deleted.....after....you installed iOS 16

3) No more than 30 days have passed since the message was originally deleted

In other words, Recently Deleted will not even appear as an option unless there are deleted messages that meet all 3 the requirements above.

As a test, delete a message that you do not need. Now, if you tap Edit, you will see that Recently Deleted appears and the message is in Recently Deleted. From there, you can tap to select the message and then tap Recover or delete the message permanently.

When a message has been in Recently Deleted for 30 days, it will then be permanently deleted automatically.