Archiving your TikTok videos can save you many hours of work in reproducing them again when needed.

But the TikTok app has no built-in “archive video” feature.

Once your content is posted, either you can choose to keep it on the TikTok servers or delete it, but not archive it.

But what if you did not want a particular video to be in front of the audience for the time being, because you want to edit some parts of it?

Or you want to remove one TikTok video from your account for a few days, but want to make it live again some time in the future.

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Or maybe video drafts are consuming a lot of your device’s memory, decreasing its speed, and you want to clear up some space.

Either you will have to change the settings to disallow other public viewers to access the media content (more on this later), or you will need to delete that particular file altogether. 

But deleting content is not the best option for you as a TikToker.

Why you should not delete TikTok videos

James McAllister, a corporate blogger on niches like technology, social media and content, believes that deleting TikTok videos is not the ideal option and instead archiving them is a better alternative.

Check out some of the reasons for why not to delete your videos:

• Every media content has its time. It is very unlikely that a video gets picked up instantly. Sometimes it takes years to finally have a “head” account in TikTok. 

It is likely that you published your support page for Messi 10 years ago, when he was a promising footballer, and it is now that the page is getting traction.

• An influencer’s content has internal connections between all their files, and one media file redirects the viewers to other media files.

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Sometimes a video which is not doing good on TikTok might be serving just as a redirecting agent to other videos on your page. Deleting it may lower traffic on your other videos.

• It will lower your overall likes. Even a small number of likes count. Deleting 50 videos which were getting 10 or 20 likes will deprive you of 500 to 1000 likes on your page. 
• And most importantly, when you delete a media file it affects your performance data on TikTok and also your page algorithm. 

When you post a video, TikTok records its performance statistics to recommend your upcoming videos to the relevant viewers. 

If you delete a video from your page, this data also gets deleted. And hence, TikTok will not be able to recommend some of your other videos to potential viewers. 

Keeping your videos archived and not deleting them is the best option for getting (or at least maintaining) traction to your TikTok handle and not adversely affecting its performance data.

How to Archive Your TikTok Videos – 3 Different Methods

There are 3 different methods to archive (per se) your TikTok videos.

The easiest way to keep your files and media to yourself is to set the app’s privacy option to “only me”. 

First Method – Setting the privacy to “only me”

The best technique to archive your videos is to change their privacy settings. 

The archived video remains on your TikTok page and so performance data or like count is not affected. 

You are just hiding it from the public to change or edit the file if needed. Once you are done you can make it live again. 

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This is like an artist going backstage for a costume change and coming back again.

Below is the step-by-step guide –

• Open the TikTok app
• Log in
• Tap the silhouette icon on the bottom right of your screen
• Select the video you want to archive
• Click on the three dots at the bottom (a dialogue box like pop-up will open)
• Click on “Privacy Settings”, then click on “Who can watch the video”
• Choose “Only me”

Now, nobody other than you can view the video.

After you have made the necessary changes in your media file, or whenever again you want to make it public, follow the same steps except for the last one, where now you have to uncheck the “Only me” option.

Second Method – Taking a Backup of your media file

If for some reason the first method does not work for you, you can always back up your videos and delete them from the TikTok app.

However, we would not recommend this, because deleting the video will also erase all the data related to it from the TikTok servers.

And when you re-upload the edited video, the servers will consider it as a new media file. 

Secondly, TikTok files will consume a lot of your device’s memory on whatever device (phone, tab, laptop or PC) you choose for the backup..

However, the good part is that the TikTok app lets you save your media files directly on your device. 

Below is a step-by-step process to do so (the first five steps are the same as in method one) –

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• Open the TikTok app
• Log in
• Tap the silhouette icon on the bottom right of your screen
• Select the video you want to archive
• Click on the three dots at the bottom (a dialogue box-like pop-up will open)
• Click on “Save Video”

This will download the file on your device.

Now, to delete the file from the app, follow these additional steps after selecting the video and clicking the three dots

• Swipe to the right
• Click on the “delete” option at the very end of the tray
• Finally click “Yes” when asked for confirmation

This will remove the file from the application

Note – The first and the second method is not actually archiving. In both methods, the size and the format of the file remains the same. 

In the first method, the file is saved in the TikTok cloud servers and in the second method, it is copied to your device. In both methods, only you have access to it and others cannot view, comment, like, or share it.

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Third Method – Web Archiving Services

There are a few web archiving services that will backup your data along with all the associated files and keep them safe.

This is the best and the most preferred method for TikTokers to have a “head account” which has hundreds of videos getting 10,000+ views.

It enables them to access their files and edit them, even when the TikTok servers are down.

One such service is archive-it.

“Archive-It partners may archive TikTok posts, accounts, topic feeds, and their associated media like any other seed site.” (source)

To use their archiving solutions, you will need to subscribe to their services.

To learn how to archive your TikTok videos and access your files later check out their page here.

However, if your videos are not generating many views or if you have a mid-tier account on TikTok, then paying subscription fees to services like these will be a costly overhead.

Then you should go with the first two methods described earlier in the post.

To know more about other TikTok features and success guides, check out our TikTok page.