A deleted Minecraft world really sucks. Sometimes you screw up and accidentally delete the file for some reason. It’s a very good idea to back up your world first. In Bedrock Edition, open the World menu in the client. Click the edit button in the menu and you’re ready to go. Go to Game and scroll down to Copy World. Click that and you can get the world backed up.
For Java Edition, all you have to do is manually copy the World folder to another drive or some external storage, very easy.
With a deleted Minecraft world on consoles or other devices, it’s much harder to get back. The PC process will depend on what steps you took previously. The game’s client has a backup function built-in, but you need to have run the backup previously, The client will not automatically backup world files by default. So yeah, it’s a great idea to back things up.
There are other options if you’re not using the client backup. Some devices will have support for external backups, depending on the devices and operating system. If you didn’t have the files saved, here are the methods you can use.
How to Recover a Deleted Minecraft World on Mobile
For Android, the backup function is your only way to go. Unfortunately, if you didn’t cover that ground, you may be out of luck.
iOS devices will often backup files from apps into either local storage or the cloud, depending on your setup.
For versions directly on iOS mobile devices, you have a few options.
You can go into Settings → iCloud → Storage and Backup to find the version of the game world linked with your iCloud account. Restore it to your device from there.
iTunes has a similar storage mechanism. You will first need to connect your iPhone to your PC, and then log into your apple device management utility. Go to Apps, select Minecraft PE from the Games options. The list will populate with any apps that have backed up files. Choose Save As on any files you wish to transfer over, and save the world files to your device.
How to Recover a Deleted Minecraft World on PC
Method 2
- Step 1 – Go to Windows Start menu, type %appdata% and press Enter
- Step 2 – Navigate to \roaming.minecraft\saves. Here you’ll find the folders where each game world is stored. Each file has its own folder.
- Step 3 – Open the Minecraft world folder you want to restore
- Step 4 – Right-click on and select Properties to get into the properties for the folder you’re in.
- Step 5 – Select the Previous version tab to list all the Minecraft world folders
- Step 6 – Select the folder you’re interested in and click Restore to recover it.
- Step 7 – Launch Minecraft, click on the menu and the world you want back should be there.
This function relies on the Windows System Restore function, so if that’s disabled or incomplete, it may not work for you. You could look into more complex data recovery solutions if you really need that world file back, but that has its own challenges. There is another complex option that might not go that far though.
Method 2
- Step 1 – Launch Minecraft, create a new world, save it and close the game
- Step 2 – Open File Explorer and navigate to (C:)/Users/User/AppData/Local/Packages/Microsoft.MinecraftUWP_8wekyb3d8bbwe/LocalState/games/com.mojang/minecraftWorlds
- Step 3 – This will populate your Worlds folder with a new entry
- Step 4 – Open the new world folder you just created earlier, and open the db folder
- Step 5 – Delete all the files and folders stored inside that folder but not the folder itself
- Step 6 – Open your deleted world folder, open the old db folder, copy everything in the db folder
- Step 7 – Navigate to your new world folder, and paste the contents of the old db folder into the new db folder
- Step 8 – Launch Minecraft, go to Worlds, open the new world and you should be able to access your old world again.
This method relies on having certain old files still present on the machine you’re working on. If you fully purged your Worlds folders, you might have to look into more invasive data recovery to get your deleted Minecraft world back.