TikTok is a popular short-form video sharing app that allows users to create, upload, and share 15 to 60 second videos. One of the main reasons TikTok takes up a lot of storage space is because it saves all of the videos you watch and engage with. Over time as you continue to use TikTok, the app will accumulate cached videos, images, GIFs, and other media files that end up occupying large amounts of storage.
Caching and Saving Videos
When you watch a TikTok video, the app downloads the video file and saves it locally on your device. This allows for faster loading when you re-watch videos or scroll through your feed. However, the app does not automatically delete these cached video files which means they continue to take up storage space. The more videos you watch, like, comment on, etc. the more cached videos will build up.
TikTok also saves a copy of any videos you shoot using the app’s camera and editing tools. As you create and upload more of your own content, it gets stored on your device’s memory. Over days and weeks of heavy TikTok use, these cached and saved videos really add up.
Large File Sizes
Another factor is that video files tend to be much larger in size compared to images or text content. A single one minute TikTok video can easily be 30-50MB in size or even more depending on the resolution. And that’s just for one short clip! When you have hundreds or even thousands of videos building up, it’s easy to see how this can occupy gigabytes of storage.
Compared to apps like Instagram or Twitter that focus more on photos and text, the fact that TikTok is centered around video means the file sizes being saved on your phone are inherently much bigger.
Downloading Videos
TikTok also makes it very easy to download videos you want to save permanently. When viewing any video, you have the option to download it directly to your device’s storage. While downloading videos can be useful if you want to watch them later without an internet connection, it also quickly eats up storage, especially if you download in high resolutions like 720p or 1080p.
Many heavy TikTok users build up large collections of downloaded videos. Even if you only download a few videos a day, it adds up over time. Hundreds of downloads later, you may be occupying 1-2GB of space or more just from stored TikTok videos.
Auto-Saving Features
TikTok has features like auto-saving livestreams and automatically saving draft videos that further add to the amount of content being stored on your device. When you go live on TikTok, it will automatically save the entire broadcast locally on your phone when you finish. And any draft videos you shoot but don’t immediately post also get stored.
While these auto-saving features are helpful, they also quietly take up more and more space that you may not even realize. 1-2 hour long livestreams and draft videos can easily occupy hundreds of megabytes.
High-Resolution Photos
While TikTok is predominantly a video app, you can also take and upload photos using TikTok. The app encourages posting high-quality photos by defaulting to fairly high resolution shots. Photos you take in-app or import from your gallery get stored at sizes like 1080×1920 pixels.
If you frequently share TikTok photos, it leads to all those high-res pictures accumulating over time and occupying quite a bit of space. Ten 15MB photos a day works out to 150MB of daily storage being used.
Image and Video Editing
TikTok has a built-in image and video editing studio that allows you to manipulate media before posting. When you use these editing tools, TikTok will save edited copies of your media to your device storage. Besides the original photo or video, it’s also saving your cropped, filtered, or adjusted versions too.
Depending on how heavily you edit and modify your content before uploading, you could be doubling or tripling the amount of space used per post. All those edits and alternate versions build up.
Advertisements and Metadata
Along with all the user-generated videos and images, TikTok also caches advertisements and sponsored content you encounter while using the app. These marketing videos and display ads also occupy storage, though typically much less than user content.
Additionally, behind the scenes the TikTok app stores metadata, thumbnails, settings, and other small files that are easy to overlook but also build up steadily with ongoing app usage and contribute to storage bloat.
Device Storage vs Cloud Storage
It’s important to understand the TikTok content taking up space is being stored locally on your device, not in remote cloud storage. Cloud storage has unlimited capacity but local device storage is finite. You may upload hundreds of TikTok videos but that doesn’t directly affect storage – downloading and saving those videos locally does.
This highlights why it’s necessary to periodically clear out your device storage by deleting old cached or saved TikTok videos and photos you no longer need quick offline access to. Otherwise that content just keeps accumulating and eating up your limited phone or tablet storage capacity.
Managing Your TikTok Storage Usage
If you’re running low on device storage, there are some steps you can take to reduce the amount of space TikTok is occupying:
- Delete old cached videos that have built up over time. This alone typically frees up hundreds of megabytes.
- Remove saved videos you no longer need downloaded offline.
- Use the app storage manager to identify and delete large unused files.
- Turn off auto-saving for livestreams and drafts you don’t need to keep.
- Reduce video resolution and image size in the app settings.
- Manually delete unused photos and edited media from within TikTok.
- Delete and reinstall the app to completely clear all cached data.
TikTok doesn’t have to be a major storage hog if you periodically prune unused videos and photos. But the nature of the platform and its auto-saving behaviors can quickly cause the app to occupy gigabytes of space. Being aware of what’s utilizing all that storage is key to keeping your device memory under control.