How to Save a TikTok Draft to Camera Roll (with Photos)

You’re probably here because you tried to save a TikTok draft to your camera roll and quickly realized TikTok doesn’t give you the option. Unlike saving one of your published videos, or another person’s video to your camera roll, you can’t save a TikTok draft to your phone.

What makes this feature even more troublesome is that your TikTok drafts are device-specific. If you clear the app’s cache or delete it, your drafts are gone forever. So, it’s important to save your TikTok drafts.

But, how do you do it if TikTok doesn’t give you the option? We’ll show you a workaround that lets you save your TikTok draft to your camera roll, then pick it up and start editing it again later.

What to Know About TikTok Drafts

TikTok drafts are unpublished videos that save to your device’s cached memory. You can open them in the app, go back to make edits, and then publish them or save them. Only you can see your TikTok drafts, so make as many as you’d like without worrying someone will see them.

Drafts are temporary files that will disappear if you make changes to your TikTok app. Logging out of the app, clearing the cache, or factory resetting your phone means all your TikTok drafts will disappear, forever.

So, it’s no wonder you may want to save these short clips to your camera roll for safekeeping. However, since TikTok doesn’t let us save them, what can you do? Can you save them and come back later to edit them? Should you just publish them to keep them safe?

We’ll explain everything and answer all your questions in the following sections.

How to Save a TikTok Draft to Camera Roll

You only have two options to save a TikTok video to your camera roll. You can screen record it using your iOS or Android device’s native screen recording feature. Or, you can publish the video for only you, then re-upload it to make edits later.

While the first option poses problems like quality loss and duplicates icons on the video, the latter takes a few extra steps but produces a cleaner final product.

Step 1: Go to Your Drafts

First, let’s go to your drafts. If you’re unfamiliar with TikTok, tap on your Profile icon. Then, select the first folder to the right labeled Drafts.

Scroll through your drafts and tap on the one you’d like to save to your camera roll.

Helpful hint: If you want to save all of your TikTok drafts, follow these steps for each one.

Step 2: Publish Your Draft

The draft takes you to the editing page. Tap Next. Then, select Only Me in the Who can watch this video menu.

Step 3: Open the Video

Tap the lock icon to view the videos published for only you. Then, tap the video you want to save to your camera roll.

Step 4: Save the Video

Finally, tap the three-dot icon and tap Save video.

Now, you can find your TikTok draft saved to your device’s camera roll. However, you can’t make any changes to a published video on TikTok. If you saved the draft because you aren’t ready to post it, we outlined the following steps below that let you edit and post the video when you’re ready.

In the following brief video, Jessica from Techboomers demonstrates how to save a TikTok draft to your camera roll.

Upload and Edit the Draft

Now, it’s time for the tricky part. Since you can’t go back and edit a TikTok video after posting (even if it’s a private video), we need to upload, edit, and post it. Fortunately, we figured that out so you don’t have to!

Here’s what to do after you published your draft and saved it to your camera roll. Follow these steps!

Step 1: Upload Your Draft

Start a new video as you would any other time by tapping the + icon at the bottom of the screen. Select any music you want to add. Then, tap the Upload option in the right corner and tap on your video.

Helpful hint: If you want to add more to your draft, you’ll have to record it and upload it with your draft. Tap the Select multiple options at the bottom of the upload page. Then, you can splice two videos together.

Step 2: Make Edits

You can now make new edits, add captions and filters, or text.

Helpful hint: If you uploaded more than one video, tap the trim icon to drag and drop the videos in the appropriate order.

Step 3: Publish or Save it Back to Drafts

Now that you made edits to your TikTok Draft, you can tap Next to go to the publishing page.

If you’d like to save the draft again, tap Draft. When you’re ready to publish your draft, write a caption, add hashtags, select a cover photo, and tap Post.

How to Delete TikTok Drafts

Perhaps you saved your drafts following our steps, and you want to clean up your TikTok storage. You can delete all your TikTok drafts at once by clearing the cache or logging out. But, if you only want to delete a few, follow these steps below.

Step 1: Open the Draft Folder

Head over to your profile and tap on the Draft folder.

Step 2: Long-Press the Draft

Hold your finger on the draft you want to delete. After a second or so, your screen will change, and you can proceed to deletion.

Helpful hint: If you want to delete all your drafts, tap the Select All button in the top corner.

Step 3: Delete

After selecting the drafts you want to delete from TikTok, select the Delete option at the bottom.

Your TikTok Drafts are Save and Sound!

TikTok drafts are a curious thing. You create these videos, add filters and text, then want to save them for a while before posting. But TikTok doesn’t let us save these videos forever. That’s why it’s essential to save your drafts to your camera roll when you aren’t ready to publish them.

Although the company doesn’t make it easy, we can save our drafts to our phone’s camera roll and upload them later. We can even make edits and add other videos. It just takes a little work and a few extra steps.

The image featured at the top of this post is ©Kaspars Grinvalds/Shutterstock.com.