Where did my Secret Chat messages go?

Secret Chats live on the two devices that created them and nowhere else. They are not in the cloud, which is why they do not appear on your other devices and cannot be restored.

The two rules that explain every case

1. Device-bound. A Secret Chat started on your phone exists on that phone and on your correspondent's device. It will never appear on your tablet, your desktop or the web version.
2. Session-bound. It is also tied to the login session that created it. Logging out and back in loses every Secret Chat on that device, even on the same handset.

So they are gone if you

• logged out and signed in again;
• reinstalled the app;
• moved to a new phone;
• terminated that session from another device;
• let a self-destruct timer expire.

There is no recovery in any of these cases, for you or for anyone else. That is the design rather than a limitation: nothing was stored anywhere that a copy could come back from.

If you need messages to survive

Use an ordinary cloud chat. Cloud chats sync to every device and restore on a new one. The choice is genuinely between recoverable and leaves no trace, and you decide which one a conversation needs when you start it.