How to Find Saved Draft Posts on LinkedIn

You’ve done it. You’ve crafted the perfect LinkedIn post - insightful, engaging, and complete with a brilliant call to action. You hit save as a draft to give it one last review later, and now... it’s gone. Finding where LinkedIn hides your saved drafts can feel frustratingly non-intuitive, but don't worry, they aren't lost forever. This guide will show you exactly how to locate your saved drafts on both the desktop website and the mobile app, plus a few essential tips for managing them effectively.

First, Why Even Use LinkedIn Drafts?

While the feature can feel a bit hidden, drafting posts directly on LinkedIn has some clear advantages. It’s a native function that acts as a valuable safety net in the middle of a busy workday. Before we get into finding your drafts, it’s worth understanding why this feature is so useful for building a consistent brand on the platform.

• It prevents premature posts. We’ve all been there: you’re midway through writing a post when you accidentally hit "Enter" or click the "Post" button. Saving as a draft gives you a buffer, making sure you only publish polished, complete thoughts.
• It gives you space for review. Great content benefits from a second look. Drafting a post allows you to step away for an hour or a day, then come back with fresh eyes to catch embarrassing typos, awkward phrasing, or ideas you could state more clearly. This is a simple but powerful editing habit.
• It captures ideas on the fly. Inspiration doesn't always strike when you're sitting at your desk. If an idea for a post hits while you're standing in line for coffee, you can quickly open the LinkedIn app, type it out, and save it as a draft for later. This stops great ideas from slipping through the cracks.

Essentially, using the native draft function helps you be more thoughtful and intentional with your content, which leads to higher-quality posts and better engagement over time. But to do that, you first need to know where to find them.

How to Find Your Saved Drafts on LinkedIn (Desktop)

Finding your saved post drafts on the desktop version of LinkedIn is straightforward once you know the trick. They don't live in a visible "Drafts" folder like in your email. Instead, you have to initiate the action of creating a new post to reveal them. Follow these simple steps.

Step 1: Navigate to the LinkedIn Homepage

Log in to your LinkedIn account and go to your main news feed. This is the page you land on by default. At the top of the feed, you'll see the post composer box that typically says "Start a post."

Step 2: Open the Post Composer

Click inside the "Start a post" box. This will open the full post creation window where you can write text, add media, and format your content.

Step 3: Access Your Saved Drafts

Once the full composer window is open, you should immediately see your saved drafts. LinkedIn typically displays them in one of two ways:

• A "Your drafts" button: You may see a small, clickable button or link at the top of the composer that says "Your drafts" followed by the number of drafts you have saved. Clicking this will open a list of your drafts.
• Your most recent draft automatically appears: Sometimes, LinkedIn will automatically load your most recently saved draft directly into the composer window. If you have multiple drafts, there's usually a small dropdown menu or an option that says "See all drafts" located at the top of the window.

From there, you can click on the draft you want to edit. It will populate the composer window, allowing you to finish writing, add images or videos, tag people, and hit "Post." If you decide you don't want to use a draft anymore, you can typically find a trash can icon next to each draft in the list to discard it.

How to Find Your Saved Drafts on the LinkedIn Mobile App

The process on the LinkedIn mobile app (for both iOS and Android) is just as simple, though the interface looks slightly different. Again, the key is to act like you're creating a new post to surface your saved ones.

Step 1: Open the LinkedIn App

Launch the app on your mobile device and make sure you're logged into your account. The main screen will be your news feed.

Step 2: Tap the "Post" Button

In the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen, you will see a center button with a plus sign labeled "Post." Tap on this to open the post composer screen.

Step 3: View and Select Your Draft

As soon as the composer screen opens, LinkedIn will show you any saved drafts you have. They usually appear at the very top of the screen in a banner or notification bar that says something like, "You have 1 unsent draft."

Tap this notification. You'll be taken to a "My Drafts" screen that lists all your saved drafts, showing a preview of the text for each one. Simply tap the draft you wish to open. It will load into the composer, ready for you to finish your edits and publish it directly from your phone.

If you wish to delete a draft, you can usually tap the three-dot menu icon next to the draft and select "Discard post."

Common Questions & Tips for Managing Your LinkedIn Drafts

While finding drafts is fairly easy, the feature has a few quirks you should be aware of. Understanding these limitations is important for any creator or marketer who relies on this tool for their content workflow.

1. Is There a Central "Drafts Folder"? (The Short Answer: No)

This is the most common point of confusion. Unlike Gmail or other platforms, LinkedIn does not provide a dedicated, always-visible "Drafts" folder in your profile or activity section. You can only access your post drafts by opening the post composer. This "out of sight, out of mind" design is a major reason why people often feel like their drafts have disappeared.

2. How Long Do LinkedIn Drafts Last?

This is another tricky part: LinkedIn drafts do not last forever. While there's no official, published expiration date from LinkedIn, users have reported drafts disappearing after a few weeks or months. The safe assumption is that they are temporary storage. They're great for holding a post for a few hours or a couple of days, but you should not treat LinkedIn's draft feature as a long-term content archive. Always keep a backup of important posts elsewhere.

3. Can You Save a Draft with Images or Videos?

Yes, for the most part. You can upload an image, video, or document to your post and then save it as a draft. When you reopen the draft later, the media should still be attached. However, it's always a good idea to double-check that the attachment is still there before you publish, as technical glitches can sometimes happen.

4. The Biggest Risk: Losing Your Content

Relying exclusively on LinkedIn's native drafts for your entire content strategy is risky. Because they can expire without warning and are only accessible through the composer, it's easy to lose valuable, well-written content. Think of it as a helpful short-term holding area, not a permanent content library. For a more professional and reliable workflow, you need a system outside of the platform.

Creating a Safer and More Efficient Content Workflow

Native drafts are a great starting point, but serious social media marketers, brand builders, and business owners need a more robust system to plan and manage their content effectively. The best way to protect your work and maintain consistency is to draft your content outside of LinkedIn first.

This approach gives you several key advantages:

• Permanent Storage: Writing your posts in a tool like Google Docs, Notion, or a dedicated social media management platform removes the risk of them expiring and disappearing. You own a permanent record of all the content you create.
• Better Collaboration and Review: If you work with a team, you can share documents for feedback and approvals before the content ever touches LinkedIn. This streamlines the editing process and keeps everyone on the same page.
• Thinking Ahead (Content Calendars): When you manage your posts externally, you start building a content calendar. You can plan posts weeks or even months in advance, organize them thematically, and create a far more strategic presence than you could by just relying on one-off drafts.
• Multi-Platform Use: You can easily adapt a post you wrote in Google Docs for other platforms like X or your company blog, creating efficiency across all your marketing channels.

Creating your content "off-platform" professionalizes your workflow. It shifts your mindset from reacting and posting on the fly to planning and building your brand's voice with intention.

Final Thoughts

Finding a saved draft on LinkedIn is simple once you know that the "Start a post" button is your gateway. The process is quick on both desktop and mobile, but remember that LinkedIn's native draft feature is best used for short-term convenience. Its lack of a permanent drafts folder and the risk of disappearing content mean it's not a reliable solution for anyone serious about building a brand on the platform.

We actually built Postbase to solve this exact frustration. Instead of wrestling with a scattered collection of temporary drafts, we needed a central place to plan, schedule, and see all our social media content visually. With our beautiful content calendar, you can draft all of your posts for LinkedIn and your other platforms in one place, collaborate with your team, and schedule everything with confidence, knowing it's permanently saved and will publish reliably - eliminating the anxiety of misplaced ideas for good.

```