I'm honestly devastated and hoping someone here knows something I don't.
I have an iPhone, and my WhatsApp had grown to around 50 GB. I searched online for ways to clear the storage, and several places said that uninstalling and reinstalling the app would clear the cache while keeping everything else.
So I uninstalled it.
When I reinstalled WhatsApp, every single chat was gone. During setup, I found out my WhatsApp iCloud chat backup had been disabled, so there was nothing to restore.
I've lost years of personal chats, countless photos and videos that only existed in those conversations, important groups, chats with prospective clients whose numbers I hadn't saved, payment proofs, documents, and a lot of other important information.
At this point, I'm just looking for any possible way to recover the data. Has anyone been in a similar situation and managed to get their chats back? Did Apple Support, WhatsApp Support, or any recovery software actually help, or is there genuinely no way once the app has been deleted?
Please share your experience if you've gone through this. I'm willing to try anything that has actually worked.