After Recording A TikTok Draft, How Do You Continue Work?

Content creators who speak directly to the camera and produce simple videos can usually get the job done quickly. They record their part, do any fast editing that’s required, add filters and effects, and upload. Easy-peasy.

Those who create much more involved TikTok posts may not be able to finish all the necessary work that easily, though. They may need to do a lengthy search for the music they want to use and photos they want to add; they may need to record in two or more locations; or they might have to set up a second shoot at another time to capture additional material.

Here are more possibilities. Even a short and simple shoot can be interrupted by an important phone call, appointment, or family emergency, or the editing process may take much longer than anticipated.

In all of those cases, work might have to be stopped for a while and then resumed later.

Smart creators understand the importance of saving their TikTok videos as drafts. It ensures that their content doesn’t disappear because a phone dies or gets lost, the app locks up, or someone inadvertently picks up their device and starts doing something else with it. That’s why they always save their partly-completed TikTok posts as drafts and return to them later.

TikTok users who aren’t familiar with how the process works may wonder how to resume work on a draft video. We’re here to help.

How To Continue Recording a Draft on TikTok

We’ll start with some bad news.

If you still have more footage to record on your phone’s camera, it’s going to be difficult to get that done in your draft version. TikTok doesn’t allow you to open a saved draft, hit the “Record” button, and keep talking or filming.

There’s a workaround, though, and we’ll discuss it shortly.

As for all the other work you have to finish on your draft, here’s how to do it.

1. Open your TikTok app and tap the “Profile” icon at the bottom right of the screen.
2. You’ll be taken to your TikTok profile, where you’ll see your content grid in the middle of the page. Thumbnails of your draft videos will be in the first column of the grid.
3. Tap the thumbnail of the draft you want to work on, and it will open in the TikTok Editor.
4. You can now perform any of the editing functions that are available when you’re first creating a draft: adding effects, filters, text, stickers, a TikTok sound, and much more.
5. If you want to add other videos or photos saved on your phone, that’s easy to do as well. Tap the “Edit” icon (a small monitor) on the right-hand menu; you’ll see a preview window and a video timeline.
6. Look for and click on the “+” icon to the right of the timeline; that opens thumbnails of everything saved on your camera reel, and you can choose any other content you’d like to add to your draft.
7. Finish your work, click “Next,” and post your completed video.

Here’s the workaround we teased earlier. If you have more footage you need to record and add to your draft, create that content separately and save it to your camera reel before reopening the draft video. From there, you can add it to the draft using the same method we described in step #5 above.

Don’t let time constraints stop you from creating the “perfect” video. Just remember: you can always save a draft of your work and pick it up whenever you have a chance.