How to Add More to a TikTok Draft

You’ve spent an hour perfecting your TikTok, meticulously trimming clips, timing text reveals, and finding that perfect sound. You save it to your drafts, ready to post tomorrow, but then it hits you: you forgot a crucial clip. Now you’re stuck wondering how to add more to that TikTok draft's timeline without starting all over again. While TikTok’s draft editor has some quirks, there are effective ways to add new footage to your existing work. This guide will walk you through the clear, step-by-step methods to get your video finished and ready to publish.

Understanding the Limitations of TikTok Drafts

Before we get into the solutions, it's important to understand one core limitation of TikTok's draft system: you cannot directly insert a new clip into the middle of a pre-existing draft's timeline. Once you've created a sequence of clips and saved it as a draft, TikTok doesn't offer a traditional video editing feature to "split" the timeline and drop in new content between clips five and six, for example.

You can adjust the clips you already have by trimming them, deleting them, or rearranging their order by tapping and holding to drag them around. But adding new footage? That’s where things get tricky. Frustrating, right? We’ve all been there. It seems like a simple feature, but its absence forces creators to find a workaround. The good news is, the workarounds are fairly straightforward once you know the process.

Method 1: The Quick Fix - Adding Clips to the End of Your Draft

If the footage you want to add can logically go at the very beginning or, more commonly, the very end of your video, your job is much simpler. This is the easiest way to add more to a TikTok draft because it works within the native editor without much extra effort.

Maybe you want to add a final call-to-action clip, a funny reaction shot, or an outro screen. For these cases, you can add new clips directly to the end of your saved draft.

Step-by-Step Guide:

1. Open Your Drafts: Go to your TikTok profile and tap on the "Drafts" folder, which appears as the first video box in your gallery. Select the draft you want to edit.
2. Enter the Editing Screen: Instead of posting, tap the video to open it in preview mode. From here, hit the “Back” arrow in the top-left corner. This action will take you back into the main editing interface, where you can see your video timeline at the bottom.
3. Add More Footage: Look for the plus sign (+) icon on the right side of your video timeline strip at the bottom of the screen. Tapping this will take you back to the camera/upload screen.
4. Record or Upload New Clips: You can now either record a new video segment directly with your camera or tap “Upload” to choose a video from your phone’s camera roll.
5. Confirm the New Clip: Once you've recorded or selected your new clip(s), tap “Next.” TikTok will automatically append this new footage to the end of your existing timeline.
6. Adjust and Re-save: From here, you can trim the new clip, rearrange it slightly if needed (though it’s now part of the timeline), and then proceed to the final editing screen to add text, stickers, or polish your effects before saving it as a draft again or posting it.

This method is fast and effective, but only if adding the clip to the end of your video makes sense for your content. If you need to sneak that clip into the middle, you’ll need a more advanced approach.

Method 2: The Ultimate Solution - Saving and Re-Editing Your Draft

This is the go-to technique for when you absolutely must insert a clip into the middle of your draft. It involves saving your edited draft as a single video clip, starting a new project, and combining that saved video with your new footage. It feels like a few extra steps, but it’s a reliable way to get the job done and gives you complete control.

Step 1: Save Your Current Draft to Your Phone

First, you need to export the work you’ve already done.

• Open the draft you want to work on from your profile.
• Tap to enter the final editing screen - the one where you add your caption, choose a cover, and see the big "Post" button.
• Before you do anything else, look on the preview screen of your video. You should see a small “Save” icon, often depicted with a downward-pointing arrow. Tap it.
• This will save the entire video, including all your applied edits, text, and effects, to your phone's camera roll as a single MP4 file.

A Very Important Note: When you save your draft this way, it "flattens" your project. All your neatly separated clips, text overlays, and stickers become permanently merged into one video file. This means you can no longer edit the text you added or re-trim the individual clips from that original draft. You’re committing to what you have, so make sure you're happy with it before you save.

Step 2: Start a Brand New TikTok

Now that your masterpiece is saved as a video file, it's time to create a new project to assemble everything.

• Go back to the TikTok home screen and tap the create (+) button to start a new video.
• On the recording screen, tap the "Upload" button on the bottom right.

Step 3: Select and Upload Your Clips in the Right Order

This is where the magic happens. Your phone's gallery will open, and you can now select multiple videos to create a new timeline.

• If you want to place the new clip in the middle, select your footage in three parts. For example, if your original video was [Clip A] - [Clip B] - [Clip D] - [Clip E] and you want to insert [Clip C], you don't have those individual clips anymore. You just have one long video of 'ABDE'. Therefore, you must rethink your assembly.
• The Easiest Way: In your Media Library, multi-select the clips in the exact order you want them to appear. Let's say you want to add [New Clip] at the beginning. You would tap [New Clip] first, then tap your [Saved Draft Video]. TikTok will number them '1' and '2'.
• If you want to insert a clip somewhere in the middle, you should have edited and saved the parts of your first draft separately. For most people, the simplest flow is to use an external editor, which we'll cover next. But for the sake of salvaging a draft, your best bet is usually adding to the beginning or end.

Once you’ve selected your clips in order, tap “Next.“

Step 4: Combine, Edit, and Finalize

TikTok will now combine your selected videos into a new timeline. You will see your newly uploaded clip and your saved draft video sitting side-by-side as two distinct clips in the editor.

• Trim if Necessary: You can now tap “Adjust clip“ and trim the beginning or end of either video segment.
• Add Your Polish: Now, you can add any new sounds, text, filters, or effects on top of this newly combined video.
• Save or Post: Once you're satisfied, you can proceed to the final steps - write your caption, add hashtags, and either post it or save this new, completed version back to your drafts.

The Pro Strategy: Edit Outside of TikTok First

After going through the save-and-re-upload method a few times, you might realize there’s a much more efficient workflow that sidesteps this problem entirely: completing the primary edit of your video before you even upload it to TikTok.

Using a dedicated video editing app gives you incredible flexibility that the TikTok editor just doesn't offer. Apps like CapCut (made by the same parent company as TikTok), InShot, or VN Video Editor are popular choices. They allow you to:

• Easily add, remove, and reorder clips at any point in your workflow.
• Save project files, so you can come back later and make changes without flattening your edits.
• Access more advanced effects, transitions, and color grading tools.
• Work on your video without an internet connection.

A professional social media manager’s workflow often looks like this:

1. Film all footage on their phone.
2. Import everything into an app like CapCut.
3. Perform all the structural edits: trimming, reordering clips, adding primary sound effects, and adding foundational text overlays or captions.
4. Export the final, 99%-complete video to their camera roll.
5. Upload that single video file to TikTok.
6. Use the TikTok editor only for final touches that require TikTok’s technology, like applying a trending filter, adding a viral sound, or using an interactive sticker like a poll or quiz.

This approach combines the power of a proper video editor with the native, trend-driven features of TikTok, giving you the best of both worlds and preventing draft-related headaches for good.

Final Thoughts

While TikTok isn't built with the flexibility of a professional video editor, you're not stuck if you need to add a clip to an existing draft. For simple additions to the end, you can use the built-in editor, but for anything more complex, the save-and-re-upload method is your most reliable solution. For a truly stress-free process, moving your primary editing to an external creative app will save you time and boost your creative freedom.

Ultimately, a streamlined workflow is about more than just editing - it's about planning your content so you can avoid these last-minute scrambles altogether. At Postbase, we built our visual calendar to make this process easier. Rather than leaving finished videos scattered in phone galleries or platform-specific drafts, we find it far better to have a central library where our polished content is ready to go. You can upload your finalized video to Postbase, customize the caption for each platform, and get it on the schedule, confident that it's complete and will publish reliably when the time is right.