Drafts on X work differently from almost every other writing tool people use, and the difference is the source of nearly every complaint about them: a draft is saved locally, on the device and app you wrote it in. It is not synced to your account, and it is not backed up anywhere.
Once you know that, the behaviour stops being mysterious. Drafts written on the iOS app are on that phone. Drafts written on the web are in that browser. They do not meet.
Finding them
- Open the composer. If you have unsaved text, closing the composer prompts you to save it as a draft.
- In the composer, look for Drafts or Unsent Posts — on mobile it appears at the top of the composer once at least one draft exists.
- On the web, the same list is reached from the composer rather than from the main navigation, which is why people who only use X in a browser often do not know drafts exist.
- If the list is empty and you are certain you saved something, check whether you are on the same device and the same account. Multi-account users hit this constantly.
The four ways drafts get destroyed
- Logging out. Drafts are cleared with the session on most clients.
- Reinstalling the app, or clearing its storage from your phone's settings.
- Switching accounts on the same device — drafts are scoped per account, and the other account's list will look empty.
- Writing on a different device and expecting it to be there. This is not data loss; the draft is exactly where you left it, on the other machine.