A quick note of clarification for TikTok users: 10-minute video uploads are still available on the app. Over the past week or so, several TikTok users have noted that the 10-minute recording option has supposedly been removed from the UI. Based on some screenshots shared by Social Media expert Matt Navarra, the option to record a 10-minute clip has disappeared. The longest recording option available now is just 3 minutes.
10 Is Still Here
This has prompted many to speculate that TikTok hasn’t seen success with longer clips, which has now seen it move back to shorter uploads to re-focus on its core strength. It’s somewhat true, based on what TikTok is saying about the ‘change’. As per TikTok:
“We have not removed 10-minute videos – users can still upload videos up to 10 minutes. There was an earlier experiment that allowed select users to also record videos up to 10 minutes from the TikTok app, but that has since ended.”
So, TikTok says that the only element that’s been depreciated is the capability to record 10-minute videos within the camera UI, and that users can still upload longer videos if they wish. However, the recording process was only a test, and TikTok has now removed it.
This possibly reflects two things – for one, it likely does suggest that 10-minute uploads haven’t been hugely popular, so TikTok sees no reason to keep supporting that functionality in the app. That doesn’t mean that no one’s seen success with longer content, but it does seem that it wasn’t being used a lot, or that users aren’t responding to longer clips, which is why TikTok is taking it away as a direct, in-stream choice.
It could also suggest that longer videos that have been uploaded to the app have generally been edited and crafted in other tools, with pro users taking the time to create more engaging, polished clips that they’re then uploading into the app. Which they don’t need the in-app recording functionality for – and really, if you’re uploading longer TikTok clips, you’re probably going to need to edit them and shape them into a compelling narrative that would make the TikTok camera less necessary, at least in this respect.
The Wrap
So, the bottom line is that 10-minute uploads are still available on the app, just that you can’t directly record them anymore. You weren’t probably going to anyway – who would wake up with a plan to record a 10-ish minute video for TikTok when opportunities are more ripe for the same on YouTube? It’s not a massive change per se, given how TikTok has always been a short-form platform.
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