How to clip a TikTok LIVE and save the replay

TikTok records your LIVE and keeps it as a replay that you can view and download for 30 days. As TikTok Support describes it (read October 27, 2026), to download one:

1. In the TikTok app, tap Profile at the bottom.
2. Tap the Menu ☰ button at the top, then TikTok Studio.
3. Tap LIVE at the top, then LIVE recordings.
4. Find the replay and tap Download.

The same list has Clip and Delete, and TikTok says your replays are in the LIVE Center too. Download the ones you'll clip early: TikTok offers them for 30 days. TikTok's pages don't say what resolution the download is, so check the file with the free video size checker before you plan around it.

Streaming from a computer? LIVE Studio can also record to your own drive, as MP4 (the default), MOV or MKV (pick the format before you start). It records your canvas in high quality, without audience information such as comments and Gifts. Its replays and highlights also sync with the app.

TikTok's own tools are for the creator of the LIVE. As TikTok's pages read on October 27, 2026:

Clip, in TikTok Studio. In LIVE recordings, find the replay and tap Clip, edit the clip, then tap Next to post it, or Save to post it later. It's quick for the one moment everyone saw, and usually already vertical if you went LIVE from your phone.

LIVE Center's editor (from LIVE Studio's help) trims a replay or highlight, generates captions you can edit, adds music and text, and for wide videos from a computer, resizes the canvas for phones (split-screen or full-screen). For more, it sends replays and highlights to CapCut once you link the account.

“LIVE highlights” means two different features on TikTok:

• LIVE Studio highlights (help page updated April 2, 2026) are a tool for creators who stream from LIVE Studio on a computer. TikTok makes them automatically from game moments, Gift peaks, comment spikes and peaks of viewers joining, and you add your own with the Highlight button or Ctrl + 1, which saves the past 2 minutes by default. They usually run 30 seconds to 2 minutes. After the LIVE, they're in the pop-up on the ending page or in LIVE Center, where you can edit, download, clip, post or delete them. LIVE Studio's instant replay also saves the last few seconds or minutes with a hotkey, to LIVE Center by default, and Autocut turns each LIVE's highlights into a finished video with music and effects, plus a weekly recap.
• Auto LIVE Highlights are for TikTok Shop. TikTok's US Seller University (December 30, 2025) says any TikTok Shop creator doing Shoppable LIVEs can turn them on in the app (LIVE, Products, Highlights). TikTok picks moments as you sell and posts them to your profile as shoppable videos, about 5 minutes after it finds one, up to 3 per pinned product and 20 per LIVE. TikTok says it's still testing their format, so some may get automatic subtitles, music or a “CLICK NOW” ending.

If you go LIVE from your phone and don't sell on TikTok Shop, your tools are the replay's Download and Clip. TikTok says both kinds of highlight are picked from what happens on the LIVE (game moments, Gifts, comments, viewers, sales), so a good story told to a quiet chat can be missing. Go through the replay yourself for those.

TikTok Support says that to go LIVE you must be at least 18 and have 1,000 followers, a number that “may vary across regions.” Sending or receiving Gifts takes 18 (19 in South Korea), and LIVE and Gifts aren't available everywhere. LIVE Studio needs its own LIVE access, which depends on your account's age, recent LIVE time and followers, and varies by country. Streamers from other platforms can apply with their channel there.

TikTok's Community Guidelines (effective September 24, 2026) say a few things that follow a LIVE into its clips:

• Gift begging doesn't travel. “Content that tries to manipulate people into giving gifts or inflating likes or follows isn't eligible for the FYF” (the For You feed). Clip the moments, not the asks.
• Reused material needs something new. Content is ineligible for the For You feed “if it includes unoriginal or reused material without anything new.” A clip of your own LIVE is your own content; the rule is about posting other people's work, such as a video you played on stream. More in TikTok's unoriginal content rules.
• Other people's content. “Streaming someone else's content without permission” can restrict a LIVE, and LIVE Studio's rules list TV sports, movies, shows and other creators' videos. A clip of you watching one has the same problem twice.
• Paid promotion. TikTok wants commercial content on LIVE disclosed with its toggle. If a clip keeps the promotion, disclose it when you post the clip too.

A LIVE from the TikTok app on a phone is usually portrait, so its replay is already the shape of a TikTok, Reel or Short. LIVE Studio on a computer can stream portrait, landscape, or both at once (its dual layout), and LIVE Studio's own advice on layouts is a good guide to what you'll be clipping:

• Portrait: the game across the full width (at least a quarter of the screen's height), the facecam in its own area. Nothing to crop: a clip needs a start, an end and captions.
• Landscape: the game full screen, the facecam in a corner at 1/16 to 1/9 of the screen's area. Crop that to 9:16 and you lose the face or the game, so stack them: the webcam on top, the game below, captions on the seam between them. The free split screen video maker does it in your browser.

Captions on a vertical LIVE. A portrait LIVE often has a lot on screen (widgets, a goal bar, names), and once the clip is posted, TikTok's own buttons and text sit over parts of it. Check where your captions land with the free safe zone checker.

What Clyper does with each. A replay that's already 9:16 is kept whole: Clyper doesn't crop it, just cuts the moments and captions them, at 1080 × 1920. A landscape replay with one small face in a corner over the game is the layout it looks for: it puts the webcam on top and the middle of the game below, with the captions on the seam. Otherwise, it frames whoever is talking. See stream clips.

A one-hour LIVE has a handful of moments worth posting. Finding them by hand means scrubbing the replay, cutting each moment (the free video trimmer cuts one, the video clipper several from one file at once) and captioning each one (the free auto caption generator transcribes and burns them in). Or let Clyper do the finding and cutting:

1. Download the replay from TikTok Studio, or use your LIVE Studio recording.
2. Upload it to Clyper (MP4, MOV, WebM or MKV, up to 4 GB, 1 minute to 4 hours). A TikTok link won't work: Clyper takes YouTube links and uploads. A LIVE over 4 hours can be cut into equal parts first with the free video splitter.
3. Clyper reads what was said and picks the moments that stand on their own: the story, the answer to a question, the reaction. It cuts each on whole sentences and scores its hook, up to 30 from one LIVE.
4. Every word is captioned, in 50+ languages and five animated styles, and the clip is framed as above.
5. Check each clip in the editor (trim or extend either end, fix any word), then download MP4s with no watermark and post them yourself.

Clyper finds moments in the talking, so it suits LIVEs where you talk: chats, Q&As, stories, commentary over a game. A LIVE that's mostly music or silent play gives it little to work with. For recordings from other apps, see recordings to clips.

Only with their permission. TikTok's rules are plain: “You should only post content you created or have the right to share,” and content that infringes someone's rights is removed. A LIVE is the creator's, and its replay sits in their TikTok Studio, not yours.

• Ask the creator. Say which LIVEs, where you'll post and how you'll credit them. See how to get permission to clip.
• Get the file from them. A downloaded replay is cleaner than a screen recording, which carries the app's buttons. LIVE Studio's help says the app lets creators share their replays or highlights with third parties for editing and posting.
• Mind the guests. In a co-host or multi-guest LIVE, other creators are in the replay too. Ask them before you post clips they're in.
• Look for programs. Some creators pay clippers per view and set the rules: see who pays clippers.

Credit isn't permission. Why, and what happens to clips posted without it, is in is clipping legal?

• TikTok. Post clips between LIVEs so people who missed one see its best moment, and tell them when you're next LIVE. Creator Rewards pays only for videos at least 1 minute long; what else it takes is in how much TikTok pays.
• Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. The same vertical clip works on both, and finds people who aren't on TikTok. Upload the clip file you made, not a video saved from your TikTok post, which may carry TikTok's watermark. See how to cross-post short videos.
• Your other streams. If you also stream on Twitch, Kick or YouTube, the same routine works there: see how to clip streams, and how to start streaming for setting up on more than one.

A clip that does well is a reason to go LIVE again soon: the people it brings in are looking for more of the same.