Oof, that’s rough. Hate it when you realize the backup wasn’t on after you need it. And all those recovery software companies charge an arm and a leg, promising miracles.
Sadly, you can’t retroactively enable the sync to get old messages. If it wasn’t on, it never saved them to the cloud in the first place.
Before you spend any money, have you checked the Recycle Bin in the Messages app itself? On my Samsung, you go to Messages > three-dot menu > Recycle Bin. Deleted messages sometimes hang out there for 30 days. It’s the only truly free option I know of.
Anyone know of any deals on legit recovery tools? Always looking for a good bargain.