Save vs Publish: what each button does
Two buttons, two different jobs: one keeps your work, the other decides whether anyone can see it.
The reel editor header has two buttons that people reasonably assume are one action. They are not. Save keeps your work. Publish decides whether anyone outside your workspace can see it. Knowing which does what saves a lot of confusion.
Save and Publish sit side by side in the editor header and do entirely separate jobs.
Save keeps your work, and changes nothing about visibility
Save writes what you have built: the clips and their order, folders, the title and description, branding, playback settings, and any gates. It never changes whether the reel is live. Saving a draft leaves it a draft. Saving a live reel leaves it live.
This is what lets you build a reel across a week. Add a clip on Monday, reorder on Wednesday, set the brand on Friday, and nothing is visible to anyone until you decide it is.
Publish decides who can reach it
Publish flips one switch: the reel goes live at its /s/ address. That is the whole job. It does not save whatever you were editing at the time.
That last point is the one worth remembering. If you have unsaved edits and you click Publish, those edits are discarded. The two buttons act on different things, so the habit to build is Save first, then Publish.
A live reel updates the moment you save
Once a reel is published, you never publish it again to push a change. The public page reads your reel fresh every time a viewer opens it, so a clip you add and Save is there on the next page load. Same for reordering, a new brand kit, a changed title, or a trim you set back on the asset page.
No re-publishing. No new link to send. The address you gave someone in March still points at the reel as it stands today.
Taking a reel offline
Click Unpublish and the reel stops serving. The reel itself is untouched: clips, settings, and view history all stay exactly where they are.
Anyone who follows an old link sees a short page telling them the reel is no longer available, with your name and contact details so they can ask you for a current link. They do not get a dead-end error, and they are never shown your work.
The address stays reserved to that reel while it is offline, so nothing else in your workspace can take it. Republish whenever you like and every link that ever worked starts working again.
Why both buttons exist
Because "I am still working on this" and "the world can see this" are different states, and collapsing them into one action costs you either safety or convenience.
Keeping them apart means a half-built reel is never one stray click from being public, a live reel improves without ceremony, and taking something down is a reversible switch rather than a deletion.
One thing to know about numbers
Insights only records views while a reel is published. A draft has no public page, so there is nothing to measure. If your view count looks frozen, check the reel is still live before assuming nobody opened it.
Questions
I edited a live reel. Do I need to publish again?
No. Publish is a one-time gate, not a release step. Once a reel is live, anything you Save appears on the public page the next time someone opens it. You only touch Publish again if you want to take the reel offline.
Can I preview a draft before publishing?
Not at a public link. An unpublished reel has no live page at all, so the way to check it is the editor itself. If you want a client to see it, publish it and use a password or the email gate to control who gets in.
If I unpublish, do I lose the link?
No. The reel keeps its address, and that address stays reserved to it. Republish later and every old link starts working again, pointing at the same reel.
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