How to Navigate the TikTok Inbox
The TikTok app is divided into five different tabs, which can be found at the bottom of the screen: Home, Friends, Post Page, Inbox, and Profile. The Inbox tab serves as a hub for notifications, direct messages, screen time reports, TikTok Lives, and Stories from people you follow.
The Inbox tab itself is also divided into its own sections. Here’s how to navigate through these different sections to make sure you don’t miss any notifications…
Activities section on TikTok
When you first navigate to your TikTok Inbox, you’ll see a summary of new notifications under New Activity. Only two notifications will appear on this page at a time, if you have more than two, a button will appear to take you to the rest of your new notifications.
Here’s how to navigate the Activity section to get a full summary of all your notifications:
- Open your Inbox.
- Tap Activity or New Activity (depending on whether you have new notifications). This will give you a full summary of your notifications, with the most recent at the top.
- To filter to a specific type of notification, tap All Activity at the top of the screen.
- Select the type of notification you want to search for (Likes, Comments, Q&A, Mentions & Tags, or From TikTok).
In your TikTok inbox, you’ll often see a summary of “[username] and X others.” If you want to see an actual list of every account that has liked a TikTok post, you can do so by clicking on “X others” or the three dots that appear next to your profile image preview.
The Your TikTok Activity section is also where you get your screen time report if you choose to opt in. Other notifications include your screen time report and promotions. The TikTok screen time report can be used to help you limit your time on the TikTok app.
One important thing to note about activity: You will receive notifications of approved follow requests here, but new follower notifications will not appear here. You will find new followers under Messages.
Messages Section
The Messages section of your TikTok inbox contains messages between friends, as well as any new follower notifications. New follower notifications will always appear above your first message conversation.
When a new connection is made on TikTok, and you follow someone who follows you back or vice versa, TikTok will create a new message conversation that will appear at the top of your conversations – just below the new followers. TikTok will include a note asking you to say hello to your new TikTok connection.
To start a new message conversation, tap the pencil icon in the top right corner of the Inbox page.
TikTok Lives and Stories
At the top of the Inbox tab, you’ll find TikTok Lives and TikTok Stories of the people you follow. To create your own TikTok Story, you can tap the profile picture that appears in the top left corner of the Inbox tab.
To watch TikTok Live and Stories, simply tap the profile photo of the account you want to watch.
Knowing How to Manage Your TikTok Inbox
Missing notifications on your TikTok account can be easier than you think. Since follower notifications appear in a different section than likes, comments, and mentions, you may miss one.
And if you’re getting a lot of notifications consistently from your popular accounts, it’s important to know how to segment them into more understandable and digestible sections.
