How to Find the TikTok You Accidentally Refresh and Think You’d Lost Forever
TikTok is an endless bottomless pit of addiction, where each video is algorithmically tailored to suit your tastes and interests. With so many relevant videos scrolling in front of your face, it’s impressive that losing even one of them is such a tragedy. But this; There is nothing worse than fully enjoying watching a video only to accidentally update the feed and see it disappear forever. That is, if you don’t know how to find it.
For most of us, TikTok is a passive activity. You don’t go looking for a video; they come to you. However, if you’ve ever tried using the search option to find anything other than a specific creator, it may not be easy for you. There are simply too many videos on the platform for you to find one particular video, especially if that video has anything to do with a hot topic.
As it turns out, TikTok’s search box is capable of finding videos you’ve seen before; this opportunity is a little buried.
How to find videos you’ve already seen on TikTok
Here’s the trick; go to the Discovery tab, then tap the search bar. Find the video you are trying to find. Include as many keywords as you like or can remember. Now hit Search, but instead of seeing the options that appear, tap the two lines next to the search box.
This option allows you to refine your search using filters. One filter that interests us is in the Activity section; ” Watched a video in the last 7 days .” This filter only shows search results for videos you’ve actually seen, which if you’re like me is a stunning option. I didn’t even know that TikTok was tracking these videos (we are of course not aware of this information). Since they are there, can we at least have a ” Watched Videos ” tab, please?
But I digress. Let me give you a personal example. I accidentally updated an interesting video based on “one of the most interesting lake mysteries.” Okay, I’m intrigued, but the video is gone forever and I lost the chance to watch it. Anyway?
Using this trick, I was just looking for “mystery”; of course, none of the results were the video I wanted to watch. However, as soon as I applied the filter, my video appeared first . It seems a little odd after years of using an app that essentially wipes this refresh button waste out of existence, but it does work.
Now credit is where credit is! I came across this feature from TikToker @lateilla who posted about the solution on their page . Lateila admits that the filter isn’t perfect, so you won’t find your video every time, but more often than not, you should see positive results here.