EDIT: It's not from wiping the cache. I found what seems to be the culprit. Tested a few things that led to the issue. Somehow, uninstalling secure folder does this. Not sure what to say at this point but incredibly frustrating to lose messages over something that shouldn't even be connected.
Made a separate post about this but thought it would be better to make another after finding the specific bug (at least in Samsung Messages)
Not sure how widespread this issue is but I have seen a few people experience this already. After the new OneUI6.1 update on S23U, when wiping the system cache partition in the system boot menu, texts seem to delete themselves from various ranges of time (for me 1 year, another person said 2). I have tested this myself twice now and confirmed that it happens the exact way, even after clearing the app data and restoring it from a backup. It just deletes them to the same specific time period. No methods of retrieval work, aside from actual backups (unfortunately for me samsung cloud backed up *after* this issue occured).
Does anyone know why this might happen? Hopefully a potential fix can come in the future, but unfortunately for some it may be too late. Not sure if there is even a solution but Samsung should be made aware of this.
Go to the Play store and download SMS backup & restore and you can prevent anything from happening to your texts - you can backup manually or automatically.
Did this and it works very well. Thank you for the info. I found the actual culprit, for some reason it was secure folder. But it's good to have a backup incass anything else causes it
Glad it helps. Such a simple app and no one really thinks about backing up their texts separately from the automatic device backups. The device backups, since they allow only one (which is stupid), are only useful if it hasn't been overwritten by one with all your stuff missing.
Personally, I'm a fanatic about backups. I'm old and I'm a techie from the early days of personal computing (pre-cell phones) and know that many, many, many things can and will go wrong.
I discovered that app when my brother died in 2015 and I immediately backed up my last texts with him, so I feel your pain about losing texts from deceased loved ones.
I don't use the secure folder, but I don't understand what it would have to do with texts being deleted, as they are not stored in the same place. That would also mean that anything one had in the secure folder would have been wiped, as well? I also haven't had the problematic update yet, and don't know if I will get it. I have an A54, so may be last on the schedule. Maybe they will have worked out the kinks by then.
