TikTok is all about sharing your talents for the world to see. While it may look easy on the outside, making a perfect video is no easy task! There are a lot of cuts that go into making the video. And even then, you may not want to post the final cut.

If you have saved your video as a draft on TikTok but want to get rid of it now, here is everything you need to know to go about it.

What are TikTok Drafts?

Drafts are basically saved videos, edited or not, that you started to create but didn’t publish on TikTok. When you save a draft on TikTok, the video is uploaded to TikTok’s server. If you captured the video from the TikTok app itself, then it won’t be available by default in the camera roll/gallery of your phone.

Drafts can be saved once your video has been edited; right before posting it. There is no limit on the number of drafts that you can save on your TikTok account. These saved drafts are private and only viewable by you.

Related: Is TikTok leaking drafts?

How to save a draft to your phone gallery or photos folder

TikTok does not provide an option to directly save drafts to your local storage; and as mentioned above, TikTok drafts are not accessible from your device’s gallery. However, there is a way to save your drafts to your phone for safekeeping. Follow this guide below to learn how to save your TikTok draft to your phone.

Launch the TikTok app, and locate the draft you would like to save. Tap on the draft to open the editor.

Now, we will change the privacy of the video so that only you can see the post. To do so, tap Who can view this video.

Next, select Private.

Now toggle Save to device on. Go ahead and post your video. Don’t worry, no one but you will be able to view it.

As soon as you post your video, a copy of it will be saved to your local storage. Go ahead and check your gallery! You can now go to your profile and delete the private video. Simply select the video, tap on the three dots, and select ‘Delete’.

How to remove saved drafts on TikTok

Deleting drafts is very easy and straightforward. Drafts are saved to your profile. Even though they appear along with your posted videos, they are only accessible by you.

To delete your drafts on TikTok, launch the app and tap ‘Me’ in the bottom panel to go to your profile.

Now tap on a draft in your ‘Public videos’ tab.

Tap ‘Select’ in the top right corner to select which drafts you would like to delete. You can select multiple drafts to delete at once.

Once you have selected your drafts, simply tap ‘Delete’ to permanently delete them off your account.

Note: Once you delete a draft, there is no way to get it back. There are some third-party apps that claim that they can. However, it is inadvisable to use such apps.

How to remove TikTok drafts without saving

In case you don’t wish to store the drafts you created on TikTok, there are easier ways to delete drafts you may have saved inside the video-sharing app. You can use any of these methods below to remove videos from your drafts folder on TikTok. 

Sign out of your TikTok account

Perhaps the easiest way of deleting your TikTok drafts is to sign out of your account if you have no plans to store the videos you have saved as drafts inside your phone. This method can be followed if you wish to continue using TikTok on your phone and don’t want to remove the app entirely from it. 

Note: You can follow this method on both iOS and Android.

To sign out of your TikTok account and delete the videos from your device, open the TikTok app and go to the Me tab at the bottom right corner of your screen. 

Inside the Me screen, tap on the 3-dots icon at the top right corner. 

When the Settings and privacy screen loads up, scroll down and select Log out at the bottom of the screen. 

You’ll now be prompted to confirm your action. Select Confirm in the dialog box that appears. 

You will now be logged out of your TikTok account on your phone and within it, all your TikTok drafts will also be removed. At this point, the video you saved is unrecoverable. 

Remove TikTok app from your phone

If you don’t wish to use TikTok again on your Android or iOS device, you can remove your TikTok drafts by simply removing the TikTok app from it. You can uninstall and delete the TikTok app from your phone by following these steps:

On iPhone

To uninstall TikTok from iOS, locate the TikTok app from the App Library on your Home Screen and tap and hold on its app icon. When an overflow menu appears, select Delete App from the list of options. 

You’ll now be asked to confirm your decision in a new prompt. Here, tap on Delete. 

TikTok will now be uninstalled from your iPhone and with it, all your TikTok drafts will also be removed from your iOS device. 

On Android

To uninstall TikTok from Android, find the app from the App drawer and long-press on its app icon. When a menu appears, select the i icon or the App info option. 

Inside the App info screen, tap on Uninstall. 

In the prompt that appears, select Ok. 

If the TikTok app gets uninstalled directly, you can be sure that your drafts folder also got removed in the process. If after selecting ‘Ok’, you get the “Keep <some> MB of app data” message inside the Uninstall prompt, make sure you have this box checked to remove the TikTok app and all of its data including the drafts folder. Once that’s taken care of, you will no longer see the drafts visible the next time you install TikTok and sign in to your account.  

Clear TikTok data from Android

This method is an alternative to signing out of your TikTok account. Here you are manually clearing out your TikTok account without signing out of it inside the app. For this, find the TikTok app from the App drawer and long-press on its app icon. When a menu appears, select the i icon or the App info option. 
Inside the App info screen, select Storage and cache. 

On the next screen, tap on Clear storage. 

Android will clear out all of TikTok’s app data including your drafts and also log you out of your account. You can then log into your account if you wish to continue using TikTok. 

My TikTok drafts disappeared. Why?

The videos you save as drafts inside TikTok won’t generally disappear for as long as you stay logged in to your TikTok account on your device. However, unlike the videos you upload to your profile, the drafts you save don’t get stored on the cloud but take up space on your iOS or Android phone itself. 

Since they’re locally saved, these files are treated the same way as any other app data on your smartphone. If for any reason, the TikTok app gets removed or offloaded, all the drafts from your account will fail to load up. In such scenarios, there’s no way to remove the drafts you saved previously and all the videos you saved for future posting will be gone forever.

To avoid such issues, it’s always best to use the ‘Save to device’ option when storing videos in TikTok drafts. 

How long do drafts stay on my account?

Drafts will remain indefinitely on your TikTok account. Once you post them, however, they will no longer show up as drafts. Similarly, once you download drafts to your phone using the method above, they will remain on your phone until you manually delete them.

It must be noted, however, that if you uninstall the TikTok app, you will lose all your saved drafts. The best way around this is by saving your drafts to your local storage. That way you are sure to have a copy of them.

We hope this article helps. Don’t forget, you can always upload your saved drafts directly from your gallery. If you have any queries feel free to reach out to us in the comments below.