If you’re looking for your TikTok watch history in the hopes of finding a recently viewed video, it’s probably not where you last saw it. The so-called clock app, as tech companies often do, has changed its menus and stashed this useful feature in an unfamiliar place.
Unlike TikTok’s early days, when the disappointment of accidentally reloading your For You page and losing the share-worthy clip was so common—so visceral—that it became a meme, locating recently watched TikToks is easy now. And if you want to become so powerful that your watch history’s limitations cannot stand in your way, you can use specific search filters and techniques to hunt down exactly what you need. Doing so will be much faster than tediously scrolling through your archive.
How to find your TikTok watch history on iOS and Android
Although people with iPhones got the ability to see their TikTok history before Android users, the processes have since unified. As it should be.
On iOS, all you need to do is tap Profile in the bottom right, hit the main menu (three lines) in the top right, touch Settings and privacy, find the Content & Display heading, tap Activity center, and choose Watch history. You can find your Comment history and Search history on the same page.
On Android, the steps are similar: Profile > main menu (three lines) > Settings and privacy > Activity center > Watch history. Again, if you never comment, you’ll only see Watch history after Settings and privacy.
No matter which mobile operating system you’re using, you’ll see every video you’ve watched within the past 180 days. If you’re trying to find something older, you’ll have to search for it with the normal TikTok search function (tips below).
You can find a recently watched video by scrolling down this page, but be warned: everything is on there. Whether it’s a video you watched in its entirety or one that happened to briefly load and autoplay as you moved around the app, it’s part of your TikTok watch history. The only videos you won’t find are Lives and Stories.
[Related: 7 tips to make the most of TikTok]
Unless you’re extremely patient, this method isn’t great for digging deep into your archive, because you can’t search the watch history page. If you’re a heavy TikTok user and watched something days or weeks ago, you’ll end up scrolling for a while. You can, however, hit Select in the top right and tap individual videos or touch Select all watch history in the bottom left. Then you can permanently get rid of those clips by tapping the bright red Delete button. At least tidy up a bit while you’re there.
How to search for recently viewed TikToks
If you struck out with the method above, you may still be able to locate the most elusive lost TikToks. The catch: you’ll need to know enough about the video you watched to type something into the search bar. And if you can’t recall anything, well, you’re probably not missing much.
From the app’s Home screen, tap the search icon (a magnifying glass) in the top right corner. Then type out the relevant keywords and hit Search. Next, hit the Watched button just above the first row of videos. This will change your search results to show any videos you’ve watched. If you don’t see this option (along with All, Unwatched, and Recently uploaded), make sure you’re in the Top tab—they don’t appear if you’re in any of the others. Otherwise, TikTok may not have registered that you watched a video related to your search terms, or it may have passed before your eyes longer than 180 days ago.
As with your watch history, the Watched search filter will display TikToks that appeared in recent searches and auto-played as thumbnails as you looked through the results, so you may have to dig deeper every time you search.
Other TikTok search tips
The main search results page, whether you filter it or not, is stuffed with content. You can use these tabs and suggestions to further refine your search or just get lost in the TikTok abyss and hope your algorithm doesn’t take a devastating hit. I, for one, will probably spend the next week telling TikTok I’m not interested in those videos where people pour milk all over the counter while “making coffee” because I searched “coffee TikTok” while working on this story. (To do so, long-press on the video when it plays on your FYP and hit Not interested on the menu that appears.)
Some videos in your search results will have a badge indicating they’re among top-liked posts for the search you ran, and if you scroll down a little you may also find related terms other people searched for.
[Related: Why some US lawmakers want to ban TikTok]
Within the less-obvious filters menu (tap the three dots to the right of the search bar, then hit Filters), there are also options to further focus your search on videos you’ve liked, dig up only those posted within a specific time frame, and sort by either relevant videos or ones with the most likes.
Under the same three dots, you’ll also see Share feedback, which is where TikTok gives you the option to provide feedback on any problems you may have had with their search function. When I first published this story back in January 2022, I joked that maybe if enough people used that form to request an easy-to-use list of recently watched videos, TikTok would make it happen. Well, we did it, folks.
This story has been updated. It was originally published in 2022.
