Your TikTok Video Won’t Post? The Most Likely Reasons

It’s incredibly frustrating to spend lots of time and effort creating and editing a sensational TikTok post, tap the button to upload it — and then get an error message, or even worse, see nothing happening at all.

It doesn’t happen often, thankfully, but there are several reasons that it might.

1. Technical Issues

Occasional technical problems posting a TikTok video can be either the fault of the social media platform or the TikTok user.

Every app experiences glitches once in a while. TikTok very rarely goes down, but there could be behind-the-scenes tech issues that prevent some of its core functions from working properly. Wait a few minutes and the problem should be resolved; if not, check with another TikToker to see if the system is causing problems for them as well. If it is, you’ll have to wait a little longer.

Otherwise, check to make sure that everything’s OK on your end. If your Internet connection is down or weak, you might not be able to upload, or you could wind up with a corrupted video posted to your TikTok account. If your phone’s storage or TikTok cache is full, that could cause problems as well.

If there’s a good chance that there’s a tech issue with your app, try clearing the cache, logging off and back in again, rebooting your phone, or downloading the latest TikTok version.

2. Your Video Isn’t Compatible with the App

This won’t be an issue if you create your videos directly on TikTok, but if you’ve used your own camera and/or edited your content in third-party software, you may be trying to upload an incompatible video.

Make sure “outside” video is encoded in either MP4 or MOV format, in 1080p (or better) resolution, and shot or edited in vertical (portrait) and not horizontal (landscape) mode; the optimal aspect ratio is 9:16. Also, be sure your device has enough storage for the file if you’re transferring the video to your phone and uploading it from there.

3. You’re Using a Blocked Sound

Not all songs can be used in TikTok videos. If the music you’ve chosen would trigger a copyright violation, the platform won’t allow a video containing it to be uploaded. Re-record the video with one of the hundreds of thousands (some think it’s more than a million) sounds available for use when you shoot a video in the app and that will solve the problem.

4. It’s Your Fault

Users who violate TikTok’s terms and conditions or Community Standards may be banned from the app. More often, penalties are applied to their account — and they could be blocked from using some of the platform’s functionality.

Serious violations generate a notification that appears in your TikTok inbox, but you may not even be aware of less-serious ones, which often lead to a shadowban on your account and prevent you from taking some ordinary actions on the app, like uploading videos.

If you’ve received a notification, it will contain information on the violation and how to appeal it. Otherwise, you just have to wait; shadowbans usually last between 3-14 days and are lifted without notice. If you get impatient, try uploading from a different device or computer. If you still can’t post your video, the issue is almost certainly with your account.

Be more careful about the content of your future videos, and you should be able to post without difficulty once the penalty is lifted.

None of the four potential issues we’ve listed seem to be causing your problem? TikTok support may be able to help clarify the situation. You can reach them on the web at support.tiktok.com, or through the “Report a problem” link in the “Settings and privacy” section of the app.