Delete a video without losing it straight away
Videos are larger than photos, and one video can appear on several public pages or inside several lessons. Deleting one therefore has a short safety sequence instead of being an instant file removal.
The prompt
“Show me what would be affected if I delete [video], then wait for me to approve it.”
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Ask for the impact first
Tell your assistant which video you mean. Bernard checks the complete known reference list and shows you:
- the video’s title and size;
- every page and lesson that uses it;
- what visitors and learners will see instead; and
- the date on which its retained copies will be removed.
If any part of that reference check is unavailable, nothing changes. Bernard will not describe a partial list as complete.
Approve the exact deletion
If the impact is what you expect, approve it in that same conversation. The approval belongs to that video, that reference list and that short period of time. It cannot be reused for a different video or after the impact changes.
The video then moves to Recently deleted. New plays and new range requests stop immediately, and its former positions show This video is unavailable. The retained copies cannot be played or silently copied back into service.
Only an account owner can manage this lifecycle. There is no ordinary shortcut to remove the retained copies early or change the 30-day date.
Restore during the next 30 days
Open Media Library, choose Recently deleted, and restore the video, or ask your assistant to restore it. The same stable address becomes playable again, so pages and lessons do not need to be edited one by one.
Recently deleted videos still use storage. At the end of 30 days, Bernard removes the current copies from both stores and releases their storage usage. If that physical cleanup needs retrying, the video stays unavailable while the system tries again.
This is separate from photo archiving. A photo can stay archived indefinitely without deleting its bytes; a video has a fixed Recently deleted period because the files are much larger. See download or archive photos for the photo version.
Questions people ask
- Does deleting a video remove it immediately?
- It stops playing immediately, but the retained copies stay in Recently deleted for 30 days. They still count towards your storage until that period ends.
- What happens to pages and lessons that use it?
- They show a clear unavailable placeholder. Before anything changes, Bernard lists every page and lesson he can find; if he cannot complete that check, deletion is refused.
- Can my assistant delete a video without asking me?
- No. An account owner must see the exact impact and approve that deletion in the current conversation. An old approval, or one for a different video, will not work.
- Can I restore it?
- Yes, during the 30-day period. Restore makes the same video address work again on the pages and lessons that used it. After the physical copies have aged out, ordinary restore is no longer available.