How To Catch A Cheating Partner – 15 Practical Tips

Tech tools that can help you uncover infidelity and protect your heart

Extramarital Affairs | | , Expert Blogger
Updated On: October 7, 2024
how to catch a cheating partner
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Is he sneaking off in the middle of the night while you’re asleep? Or is she hiding her phone from you constantly? While they are having their share of fun, you are losing sleep over signs your partner is cheating on you. That gut feeling gets stronger every time you realize your partner’s phone is suddenly more important to them than you are. This niggling suspicion and your SO’s fishy behavior can leave you wondering how to catch a cheating partner.

Since signs someone is cheating on you can be varied, you cannot rely on them to conclusively confirm or negate your suspicions. Even more so, if your cheating partner is smart and adept at covering their tracks. Besides, in this digital age, a cheater doesn’t even need to step out of their home or carefully plan clandestine rendezvous to indulge in their philandering ways. A phone is all they need to carry on their transgressions. What’s worse, they could be doing it all right under your nose.

That’s why, you need a more proactive approach on how to catch a cheater if you want to put this inner turmoil to rest, one way or the other. Thankfully, there are plenty of digital hacks that can help solve your dilemma of how to catch cheaters on iPhone or Android or even in real life. We’re here to help you learn how to put them to good use and catch a cheating spouse who is very clever.

How To Catch A Cheating Partner—15 Tricks To Help You 

Figuring out how to catch a cheating wife/husband/partner isn’t really that hard these days with technology at your fingertips. Increased social media activity, constantly being on their phone, and protecting their phone as if it holds the nuclear launch codes are some of the tell-tale signs someone is cheating on you. If you know your partner well enough, you will be able to spot these easily. However, relying solely on signs of cheating can also backfire because when suspicion takes hold, you start viewing everything around you from that jaded lens.

This can make you spot signs of infidelity where none exist. This is what happened with Maya and her husband, George. The couple and their two kids have an idyllic suburban life. George would always be home from work at 6 and spend quality time with his family. Then, Maya started noticing that George began working extra hours, which sometimes went on till 11 PM. Even at home, he was never really interested in being with Maya and the kids.

how to catch a cheater
You need a foolproof approach to catch a cheater

Maya started to wonder if there was another woman who was keeping him all too busy. One evening, she confronted George, accusing him of cheating. Turns out, George was up for a really big promotion at work and was, in fact, spending all of those extra hours at work to make sure he got it. His preoccupation even when he was at home was nothing more than anxiety about the upcoming promotion. Maya’s premature accusations caused trouble in their paradise.

To make sure something similar doesn’t happen to you, you need a foolproof approach to how to catch a cheater. Besides, given how well cheaters hide their tracks, you need to get your Sherlock game on point. Whether you’re wondering how to find out if your spouse is cheating for free or how to catch a cheater that deletes everything, there are a host of tools and tricks that you can use to your advantage. We bring you 15 such tricks that will help you perfectly on your mission—how to catch a cheating partner:

Related Reading: Gut Feeling He’s Cheating, No Proof? 31 Signs Your Instincts Are On Point

1. Keep an eye on their notifications 

A cheating spouse or partner will be very conscious of what is on their phone. They will never just hand it to you or allow you to look through it. If your partner is suddenly overprotective of their phone and that is out of character for them, you already have your first sign. One of the most effective ways to catch a cheating spouse is to get a hold of their phone for a short while, though that might not be easy.

You need to watch out for their push notifications to catch someone cheating on the phone. Any recurring text messages or calls from a new contact name could be a key clue. If they have removed their push notifications completely, that could be a sign your husband is talking to another woman or your wife is falling for another man. Trying to gain access to your SO’s phone is one of the most basic answers to how to catch a cheating wife or catch a cheating husband on WhatsApp.

Related Reading: 12 Tips On How To Ignore A Cheating Husband – Psychologist Tells Us

2. Use Find My iPhone to track their whereabouts

Thanks to Apple, figuring out how to catch a cheating partner is easier than ever if you and your partner are both iPhone users. If you’re wondering where to look on iPhone for cheating, the ‘Find My iPhone’ feature can come to your rescue. The location tracking technology helps you find out where a person is at all times. Most families with iOS have a family account, and that way if you enable location sharing, all you have to do is log onto your cloud and use the Find My iPhone feature to track your partner’s location. This is one of the smart ways to catch a cheating wife or husband.

However, you need to make sure that your partner has enabled this feature. If they haven’t, you can either sneak into their phone and switch it on or persuade them to do it, with something like “What if you lose your phone? Just turn it on, it could save you from buying a new one.” The only catch is that this trick only works in tracking real-life transgressions like clandestine meetings with one’s affair partner and might not be of much use if you’re trying to catch cheating on the phone or the virtual realm.

how to catch cheaters on iPhone
Track your partner’s whereabouts using the Find My iPhone feature

3. Dig into their Google Chrome passwords 

It may not be easy to access your partner’s phone if they are cheating on you. However, to catch a cheater online, you can then turn to their computer instead. Say that your laptop is down and you need to send an urgent email or something to that effect so that they cannot say no. 

Swiftly hop into their Google Chrome passwords which is basically a host of saved passwords to their accounts everywhere. Now, you can also check what sites they regularly visit that require their passcode. Check for any dating sites that they may have frequented and you can obtain passwords to all of them with just a few clicks! If you have more time on your hands with their laptop, go ahead and open up their browsing history as well. Unless you’re trying to figure out how to catch a cheater that deletes everything, this can leave you with a gold mine of information.

If, through their browsing history, you don’t find any signs of cheating but the insatiable itch just won’t go away, you could check their hard disk for clues as well. Check their folders, the sub-folders, the Word docs, the images, the whole nine yards. While this may give out the most stalker vibes you’ve ever felt in your life, at least you’ll come out of it with more information than you had before.

Related Reading: 12 Signs Of Snapchat Cheating And How To Handle It

4. Spyware apps are the answer to how to catch a cheater 

Yes, this may be a little extreme but if you have solid reasons to be suspicious of your partner, there is no harm in going down this road. Many spyware apps can be downloaded and installed on your cheating partner’s phone seamlessly. All you need is access to your partner’s phone for a few minutes to install these apps. If you’re wondering how to catch cheaters on iPhone, you don’t even need physical access to their phone. You can install these apps remotely by signing into their iCloud account, which, if you’re on a family share plan, shouldn’t be hard or raise any suspicions.

Likewise, if you’re wondering how to catch a cheating wife/husband and track their online activities, you can download apps such as Keyloggers. This app records all the activity on a user’s computer. What a person is watching, what apps they’re using— everything is recorded. Even the emails they send are all recorded on Keyloggers and satin-wrapped perfectly for you. If you do find something and they pull the old “How’d you get in my phone?” shenanigans, remind them that the fact they’re cheating on you is far bigger a deal than their breach of privacy.

5. Uber ride-sharing to the rescue 

How to catch a cheating partner is all about gathering little clues and making sense of them. For instance, if your partner uses Uber often, you can even use that to expose their cheating ways. To do this, you need to use Uber’s ride-sharing feature to your advantage. Log onto the Uber app, manage their trusted contacts, and add your number to always receive notifications about their rides. Easy, simple, and done. If you’re wondering what is the best way to catch a cheating spouse who is very clever, this novel approach should do it for you.

6. Sift through trash and archived folders

How to catch a cheater that deletes everything, you ask? Looking for the best way to catch a cheating spouse who is very clever? Well, it’s time to sift through their virtual trash. For instance, the trash folder in a person’s email account can hide a lot of secrets. Perhaps, they deleted an email regarding a hotel booking done for a secret meeting with their affair partner but forgot to remove it from the trash.

The same goes for recently deleted folders on the phone. Steamy images clicked for their paramour’s benefit could still be sitting in their recently deleted folder if they’ve deleted it in a hurry. Likewise, archived folders and locked chats hold the key to how to catch a cheating wife or how to catch a cheating husband on WhatsApp. If your partner is trying to hide chats from you, these are the only two places on WhatsApp they can do so. Simply browsing their archived folder can do the trick if you’re been struggling to catch cheating on the phone

7. Search for unusual information 

This may take a while and a lot of attentive effort, but it’s a good trick when you need to plan how to catch a cheating partner. To catch a cheater online, you will have to search for various apps on their devices to know what they are accessing. Some of these apps seem harmless but your partner could be using them to cheat. 

Even a harmless app like Discord needs to be combed through because your partner may be doing all their interactions with their other partner there. To check their digital tracks, you should also dig deeper for cheating and affair apps or dating apps like Tinder or so. Don’t disregard those office apps either, check out their Slack, Zoom, and Google Meet and look for signs of suspicious activity/conversation. If they really are clever about covering their tracks, these unlikely places are most likely where you’ll find proof of their cheating. And they thought they were being slick by hiding it in plain sight!

Related Reading: Cheating In A Long-Distance Relationship – 18 Subtle Signs

8. Check for hotel or flight bills 

How to catch a cheater, you wonder? It’s time to go back to basics and look for any suspicious hotel or flight bookings your partner has not told you about. Now that a lot of hotel and flight bills are digitized, these show up as emails and text messages, and of course, the charges are reflected in credit card statements. Your partner won’t delete those because those are usually important messages. If you find too many hotel bills and such, you might have a serial cheater on your hands.

how to find out if your spouse is cheating for free
Comb through their finances to find any suspicious payments

9. Use spy cameras

If you suspect that your partner has been carrying out their transgressions in your home, it may be time to bring out the big guns. Get a few micro spy cameras and install them around the house. And pretty soon, you will spot your partner with their mystery visitor when you’re not at home. You could also throw in a couple of voice recording devices in the corners where your partner hides out to attend phone calls. The whole situation will be clear as day!

This is a rather unorthodox approach toward how to catch a cheater, however, desperate times call for desperate measures. If your partner is being cruel enough to not just cheat on you but also violate the sacredness of your home in the process, you shouldn’t feel guilty about spying on them.

Related Reading: 22 Sure Signs Of A Cheating Girlfriend

10. Psychological tricks to catch a cheater: Study the changes in their behavior

Here we give you one of the best psychological tricks to catch a cheater—play on the cheating guilt. Carefully notice the subtle changes in their countenance and way of talking or even regular habits. Suppose, you have found out about a secret destination they visit with their lover quite frequently. Now you casually propose to go there on your next holiday and observe if there was a quick change of expression on your partner’s face. They would avoid eye contact out of guilt whenever they are hiding something from you. Out of many tricks on how to catch a cheater, the easiest is to put them in a spot and see how they react

11. Try the 13-second trick to catch a cheater

Speaking of psychological tricks to catch a cheater, we’ve got one that rarely misses the mark. The 13-second trick to catch a cheater is a psychological technique that involves asking your partner a seemingly simple question about their whereabouts or activities, then pausing and maintaining eye contact for about 13 seconds after their response. The idea is that if they’re lying, the prolonged silence and direct gaze may make them uncomfortable, leading to fidgeting, nervousness, or inconsistency in their story. The trick works on the assumption that liars often feel compelled to fill the silence or may start over-explaining, while someone being truthful will be more at ease during the pause.

12. Create a fake profile 

This is catfishing, but with the right intentions in mind. If you know your partner has philandering tendencies, give them bait and see if they bite. Create a fake profile, pretending to be someone else, entice them into a conversation and catch them red-handed if they flirt back with you. They know there are plenty of fish in the sea but we’re sure they didn’t anticipate this one would be you! Such effective ways to catch a cheating spouse/partner would lay down the truth before you without much struggle on your part, although what’s coming next can be soul-crushing.

13. Try Android/iPhone hack to see deleted messages

If you’ve got on your hands the predicament of how to catch a cheater that deletes everything, fret not. Nothing ever gets truly erased from the digital space. You just need to know where to look. For instance, if you suspect your partner is resorting to texting cheating, all you need is an effective Android/iPhone hack to see deleted messages. We’ve got several you can explore.

iPhone hacks to see deleted messages

There are quite a few ways to access deleted messages on iPhones. Choose the iPhone hack to see deleted messages that is the easiest for you to implement and watch the magic unfold. Here a few options:

  • iCloud backup: If your partner has iCloud backups enabled, you may be able to restore deleted messages by restoring their phone to an earlier iCloud backup
  • iTunes or Finder backup: Likewise, if they have backed up their iPhone to iTunes or Finder on a Mac, you may be able to recover deleted messages from an earlier backup
  • Check synced Apple devices: If you use the same Apple ID on multiple devices and have iMessage turned on, deleted messages might still be accessible on another device like a Mac, iPad, or another iPhone
  • Data recovery software: You can also use third-party apps such as Dr.Fone or PhoneRescue to recover deleted data, including text messages, directly from an iPhone without backups

Android hacks to see deleted messages

You have similar hacks for recovering deleted messages on Android devices as well. These include:

  • Google Drive backup: If your partner has Google Drive backups enabled, you may be able to restore deleted messages from a previous backup
  • Data recovery software: Use third-party apps designed for recovering deleted data, including messages, from an Android device. Some popular tools include Dr.Fone – Data Recovery, FonePaw Android Data Recovery, and Tenorshare UltData for Android
  • Check SMS Backup and Restore app: Many Android users install apps like SMS Backup & Restore, which can automatically backup messages to Google Drive or local storage. If your partner has one of these apps installed, you can recover deleted messages from the last backup
  • Use Notification history: If your partner has enabled notification history, you might be able to see portions of deleted messages that were shown in their notifications. Or you can turn it on, on the sly, to get a glimpse of their texts
on cheating

14. Take them by surprise and catch them in the act

You may feel like a crazy stalker executing this idea, but if you’ve exhausted all your options on how to catch a cheater, it’s time to catch them in the act. You have a few leads on your partner’s whereabouts – where do they go, who do they see. Trust your hunches and follow them to the spot where their secret lover is waiting. They will hardly get any chance to deny the affair once you reach there unannounced.

If the ‘following your partner’ trick doesn’t appeal to you, try another one. Tell your partner about certain plans which are completely made up and cancel them at the last moment. Say, you have a business trip over the weekend. You leave for the airport and come back in half an hour with an excuse. It will give you an edge in discovering an affair.

15. Confront them

To end your how to catch a cheating husband/wife conundrum, let’s play the ultimate trump card up our sleeve. So, you have done your research and are equipped with all the information to prove that something shady is going on behind your back. Now all you need is to bring a confession out of them. At this point, a direct confrontation is the only trick you can pull on your partner.

Honestly, you are not going to like what you are about to hear. But if the situation has come down to this, it’s better to hammer the last nail in the coffin. To get your girlfriend to admit she cheated or crack your boyfriend to let the truth out, throw the questions that have been bothering you for so long. Once everything is said and done, you can decide the fate of your relationship.

Key Pointers

  • The suspicion that your partner is cheating on you may leave you feeling restless to find proof of your transgressions
  • If your cheating partner is smart about covering their tracks, uncovering their infidelity may be harder than you imagine
  • Technology that makes cheating easier than ever also opens up avenues for you to catch a cheater in the act
  • Keeping tabs on your partner’s notifications, Google Chrome history, and Uber activity, and sifting through their devices are some ways you can get proof of your partner’s cheating
  • Then, there are spyware apps, tricks to access deleted messages, and old-school methods like tracking your partner’s movements and catching them red-handed

Final Thoughts

Infographic on how to catch a cheating partner
Smart tricks to catch a cheating partner

How to catch a cheating partner isn’t that hard as long as you follow these steps. But only go to these lengths if you really have a strong basis for your belief. You do not want to be unnecessarily lurking about when they have nothing to hide and make them feel ashamed for no reason. Think about it, make sure you’re sure, and go for it. 

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