Why Does TikTok Take Up So Much Storage?

Why does TikTok take up so much storage

In today’s world, it’s impossible to get through the day without using at least a few of the countless useful apps available and all of these apps do take up quite some space on our smartphones.

It becomes problematic if an app, like the popular social media platform TikTok, consumes a fair amount of storage space — this can really be frustrating!

Today’s blog, I’ve addressed the most common question “Why Does TikTok Take So Much Space On My Phone?” head-on with the best answers possible!

Why Does TikTok Take So Much Space On My Phone?

When it comes to storage space, TikTok is a massive hogger. TikTok stores everything from your saved draft to your watch history to your TikTok cache files, all of which can add up quickly.

As for a more thorough explanation, the reasoning is very straightforward: the more you use the app, the more information it will collect and the more room it will take up on your device.

The app itself only takes up a little more than 300MB of space on your phone, but heavy use, video downloads, and saving draft can increase that number to several gigabytes, and it has even been reported to reach as high as 221GB!

How Can You Reduce The Space That It Takes

When it comes to how to make room on the platform, there are a number of different approaches that you might take:

Tip #1 — Clear cache

Clearing TikTok cache is a tried-and-true technique for clearing up space on a device, and it basically means removing and deleting any unnecessary temporary files from the app in order to free up space.

You can do it in 2 easy ways: straight from the phone’s settings app, or through the TikTok application.

#1 — Clearing TikTok app cache directly from the app:

Step #1 — Login to your TikTok account and tap on the TikTok Profile icon in the bottom right of your screen.

Step #2 — Next, tap on the hamburger button (3-line icon) on the top right of your screen.

Step #3 — Now, head on to the app settings through the Setting and Privacy option.

Step #4 — Lastly, tap on the Clear Cache button and you’re good to go!

Source: TikTok

#2 — Clearing TikTok cache directly from your phone’s settings:

There are 2 ways of doing it:

#1 — iOS device:

Step #1 — Head on to your iPhone storage.

Step #2 — Search TikTok App and tap on it.

Step #3 — Lastly, tap on Offload App.

#2 — Android phone/Android device:

Step #1 — Head on to your Phone Settings menu and tap on App.

Step #2 — Next, use the search button and locate the TikTok app.

Step #3 — Lastly, tap on Storage and then tap on Clear Cache!

Tip #2 — Uninstall and reinstall the app

This is one of the most effective methods for resetting your app to its original factory settings. After you uninstall and reinstall the app, all of the TikTok data will be removed from the app, it is in exactly the same state as a brand-new app.

This is one of the quickest ways to clear data and free up some good storage space on the TikTok app.

But remember, once you delete the app, you’ll permanently lose access to all of your data. So make sure you save all your important draft videos to your Google photos, camera roll, Google drive, or other similar places before using this workaround.

After deleting or uninstalling the mobile app, you can simply reinstall it from the Google Play Store or from the App Store.

Tip #3 — Delete drafts

It goes without saying that if you are a TikTok user, you have probably recorded videos in the past but never uploaded them. The drafts are where these videos are preserved.

Without you realizing it, as the number of these films grows over time, they begin to occupy an increasing amount of space.

In order to free up some space on your device, it is a good idea to keep a check on these videos frequently and remove the data at regular intervals.

Now coming to the action steps, deleting drafts is literally a work of a few seconds:

Step 1 — Open TikTok and go to your Profile.

Step 2 — Go to the Drafts tab on your profile page.

Step 3 — Now, tap Select in the top right corner of your screen.

Step 4 — Next, Select the video(s) you want to remove.

Step 5 — Lastly tap on Delete at the bottom of the screen. Once the pop-up comes up on your screen, press Delete.

Tip #4 — Clear watch history

According to sources, the software probably downloads the videos you’ve watched in the past 7 days and keeps them as app data; the more videos you watch, the more space the app will take up on your smartphone.

For clearing your watch history, follow the following steps:

Step 1 — Go to your TikTok profile, tap the three horizontal lines in the top-right corner of the screen.

Step 2 — Next, tap Settings and privacy.

Step 3 — Now, under the Content & Activity section, click on Watch history.

Step 4 — Lastly, tap Clear history at the bottom of the screen.

What Kind Of Data Does TikTok Store?

Well, TikTok saves a variety of information within the app that makes the overall app’s performance much smoother and faster.

Your profile data, user data, website data, and the TikTok profiles you’ve viewed over time are all stored in the cached data files.

On top of that, TikTok stores all the videos you’ve seen within the past week as downloads, which is a big reason why the software takes up so much space.

Finally, TikTok saves any videos that have not yet been uploaded to the site as drafts in the app’s memory, which can be accessed via the drafts menu.

How Can You Prevent TikTok From Using So Much Storage In Future

The answer is actually somewhat related to the ones that I had discussed under “Methods to minimize space on TikTok.”

I’ve come up with the top 3 solutions for preventing TikTok from using storage in the future are as follows:

1. Clear the cache on a regular basis to get rid of any unnecessary temporary data using up space.
2. Always take a quick look at your saved drafts, although they may not seem like much, they add up over time and take up space. If you happen to record a TikTok video that you don’t like, you may easily simplify the process by deleting it right away.
3. Last but not least, regularly erase your watch history because it can fill up a lot of space if you use the app for an extended period of time.

Do TikTok Drafts Take Up Storage?

The answer to this frequently asked question on the internet is a strong YES! The amount of videos you create but do not upload to the platform ultimately takes up space on your device.

So, yes, it will eventually eat up space on your device when you save hundreds of videos as drafts. Therefore, it is always good to look through all of your drafts and remove the ones you don’t want if you need to free up some space.

How to Reduce TikTok Storage iPhone?

When it comes to clearing cache, watch history, and draft from within the app, the actions and processes that you need to take are the same for everyone regardless of the device that you are using.

But if you want to clear cache directly from your iPhone storage, follow these quick steps:

Step 1 — Head on to your iPhone storage.

Step 2 — Search TikTok App and tap on it.

Step 3 — Lastly, tap on Offload App.

You can also free up space by uninstalling and reinstalling the app. Here are the action steps for the same:

Step 1 — First, long press on the TikTok App

Step 2 — Next, tap on Delete and then confirm Delete

Step 3 — Now, head on to the App store and search for “TikTok” in the search bar

Step 4 — Lastly, select Get and tap on the Install option.