TikTok favorites: find, search, and keep your saved videos

You favorited a TikTok to come back to, and now you're swiping through an endless grid, or the one you wanted is a gray tile reading "unavailable."

How to find saved videos on TikTok

Tap Profile, then the bookmark icon in the toolbar above your profile grid. That's your Favorites tab. On tiktok.com, open your profile and choose Favorites.

Inside, look for sections for what you've saved: videos (some versions say Posts), Sounds, Effects, and Hashtags, along with your Collections. TikTok changes these labels between versions, and its own pages sometimes call this area "Saved."

To save a video, tap the bookmark icon on the right-hand side, or press and hold the video and choose Add to Favorites. The heart is a Like, which is a different list.

Where are my saved sounds?

In the same tab: Profile → bookmark icon → Sounds. Saved sounds can't go into Collections, which only hold videos.

TikTok collections: how to organize your favorites

Collections are named folders inside Favorites:

• Create one. In Favorites, tap Collections → Create new collection, name it, and add videos.
• File while saving. Right after you favorite a video, TikTok offers a way to manage it and send it to a Collection.
• Manage videos. Open a Collection and tap Manage videos to add, move, or remove them. Removing a video from a Collection keeps it in your Favorites.
• Share one. TikTok's Shared Collections let two people who follow each other build one together. They need to be over 16.

How to make your TikTok favorites private

TikTok's help center doesn't spell it out, but your Favorites are reported to be private by default, so there's usually nothing to change. Collections are the exception, because they can be public:

• Check a Collection. Open it, tap the share icon, and look for Make private or Make public. Public Collections can appear on your profile's Favorites tab.
• Watch the toggle. When you create a Collection, leave Make public off.
• Check favorite sounds. TikTok's Discover pages describe a separate option under Settings and privacy → Privacy for who can see favorite sounds. It may not appear on every version.

Liked videos have their own visibility setting, so check that too if you care who sees them.

Does TikTok tell someone when you favorite their video?

We can't say for sure, because TikTok's help center doesn't answer it. Its list of account settings has notification toggles for new likes, comments, and followers, and none for favorites, which points toward no. But TikTok's Discover pages, which are search landing pages rather than help articles, say creators are notified and sometimes that your username is included. Third-party guides say creators can see how many times a video was saved, but not who saved it. Until TikTok documents it, assume a favorite might be visible to the creator. Here's how that compares on other apps.

TikTok favorites not showing or not working

1. Check you're in the right tab. The bookmark icon is Favorites and the heart is Likes.
2. Check the right section. A saved video can sit under a differently labeled sub-tab, or in a Collection you've forgotten about.
3. Try the other surface. Open your profile on tiktok.com, or the app if you were on the website. If your favorites show there, the list is fine and the problem is that app.
4. Update the app and restart it, and check your connection. On Android, try clearing the cache in the app's settings.
5. Check the account. Favorites stay with the account you saved them on.

TikTok doesn't publish a fix for this, so these are general checks rather than an official procedure. If it comes back on its own, it was likely on TikTok's side.

Why your saved videos say "unavailable"

Your Favorites keep a pointer to a video on someone else's account. It can break when:

• The creator deletes the video. This is the most common cause.
• The video or account goes private. A video set to friends-only, or a private account you don't follow, cuts off your access.
• TikTok removes it for breaking the rules.
• The account is banned or deleted, which takes all its videos with it.

Dead tiles can stay in your grid. To clear one, open it if you can and tap the bookmark icon again. If it won't open, try removing it through Manage videos in a Collection.

Saving the file instead has limits: TikTok only lets you save a video if the creator allows it, and you end up with a loose file that nothing can search.

How to delete all your favorites on TikTok

We found no "remove all" button in any guide or TikTok page we could read. Two things to know before you start:

• One at a time works everywhere. Open a video and tap the bookmark icon to unfavorite it.
• Deleting a Collection doesn't unfavorite anything. The videos stay in your Favorites, and the same goes for removing them from a Collection with Manage videos.

Tools that promise to remove them all act on your logged-in account, so be cautious. If you want a record first, export your Favorites. If you use Stashr, unfavoriting in the browser where it's installed removes the post from your library too. Here's how to delete all your saved posts at once on other apps.

How to search your TikTok favorites

Neither TikTok's own pages nor the guides we read describe search inside Favorites, and TikTok's main search bar looks across TikTok. In practice, you have three options: scroll, file new saves into Collections so there's less to scroll, or search a list made from your data export.

How to back up your TikTok favorites

TikTok's data export lists your favorites as dates and links, with no videos. How to export your TikTok data walks through it, and the TikTok favorites exporter turns the file into a list you can use.

How to keep what you saved on TikTok

Stashr is a browser extension that watches TikTok's bookmark button on the website and keeps a record of each favorite in a private library: the caption, creator, and cover image, plus every image of a photo post. The video plays from TikTok, so playback depends on the original. But if the video disappears, you still have its cover and know what it was and who made it, and you can search for it by what you remember:

The extension runs on desktop browsers, so favorites from the phone app arrive with your next import.

Common questions

Can people see your favorites on TikTok?

Reportedly not by default. The exception is a Collection set to public, which can show on your profile. Check yours using the privacy steps above.

Is there a limit to how many videos I can favorite?

TikTok doesn't publish a maximum.

Remember every TikTok you saved, even after it's gone.

Stashr keeps the caption, creator, and cover image when you favorite on tiktok.com in a desktop browser, so you can still find it later. 14-day trial, no card required.

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