Scheduled Social Media Posts Not Publishing? How to Fix It

A scheduled social media post that did not publish was stopped at one of a few points the networks document: the time or time zone was not what you meant, the connection between your tool and the account expired or was revoked, the account is the wrong type or lost its role, the media is outside the network’s spec, a publishing cap was reached, the post uses a feature that can only go out as a reminder, or the network blocked or hid it. Open the failed post, read its status and error text, then work down the eight checks below. They are ordered by what is cheapest to check first, not by how often each one happens.

Every network fact on this page was read on October 12, 2026, from the pages listed under Sources, each with its link and the wording it was read from. TikTok’s developer site did not load from our network that day, so the TikTok facts come from Internet Archive captures of TikTok’s own pages, dated May 21 to October 3, 2026, and are marked as such. If your question is about one tool’s screens, its help centre is the place; this page covers what the networks require.

Jump to a network: Instagram, Facebook, Threads, LinkedIn, TikTok, X, YouTube, Pinterest, Google Business Profile, Bluesky. Or go straight to the error messages.

First, read the failed post’s status and error#

Before you change anything, open the failed post in the tool that scheduled it and copy its status and its error text. The error table further down matches the networks’ documented wording to what it means.

A failure can show up only at the scheduled minute. Meta’s documentation says “Facebook will not notify you that an access token has become invalid”, and that an app “may only learn that a given token has become invalid when you attempt to make a request to the API” (source 9).

Two questions narrow the search:

• Did every post to that account fail, or only this one? Connections and roles belong to the account, so a problem there stops every post to it (checks 2 to 4). Media, caps and content rules are judged post by post (checks 5 to 8). This is our reasoning from how the networks describe tokens and limits, not a rule any of them states.
• Did the post go out after all? Look at the profile on the network before you retry, so the same post is not sent twice.

In Meta Business Suite, Meta’s own tool, the place to look for an error message on a failed post is Content, then Scheduled (source 15).

Eight checks, cheapest first#

This order is by how cheap each check is, not by how often each cause happens. The list is compiled from the networks’ documentation, not from support cases.

1. Is the date, time and time zone what you meant?#

Open the scheduled post and read its date, its time and the time zone the scheduler used. What the networks document about scheduled times:

• LinkedIn’s own scheduler converts the time you pick to UTC from your device’s time zone settings. A member post can be scheduled from 10 minutes to 3 months ahead (source 21). LinkedIn’s help page for Pages gives a different minimum, an hour ahead (source 22).
• Facebook Pages through the API accept a publish date between 10 minutes and 30 days from the request (source 11).
• YouTube publishes a video at once when the scheduled time is already in the past (source 39). The date shown on a watch page is based on Pacific Standard Time, so a video can carry a different date from the one you picked (source 40).

For the window each network’s own scheduler allows, see how far ahead each network lets you schedule.

2. Is the account still connected?#

Look at your tool’s list of connected accounts for one that asks to be connected again. How a tool shows this is its own business. What the networks document is how long a connection lasts and what ends it early:

Treat every lifetime in that table as today’s figure. Meta says of its own that they “may change without warning or expire early” (source 8).

The fix the pages describe is the same each time: sign in again through your tool’s connect flow. Meta says the person “will need to login again to get a valid access token” (source 9), LinkedIn that the member “must reauthorize your application” (source 17), and Pinterest that you “explicitly request access again” (source 32).

3. Is it the right kind of account, and do you still hold the role?#

A connection can be valid and still not allowed to publish. Check the account type, then your own role on it:

• Instagram. Meta’s API serves professional accounts only, which means a business or a creator account (source 5).
• Facebook Page. The person who connected the Page must be able to perform the CREATE_CONTENT, MANAGE and MODERATE tasks on it (source 11). When the role is gone, the documented error is subcode 492 (source 10).
• Instagram connected through a Page. The person needs the MANAGE or CREATE_CONTENT task on the linked Page. If the Page requires two-factor authentication, that person must have completed it “or the request will fail” (source 4). If the Page requires Page Publishing Authorization, the account “cannot be published to until PPA has been completed” (source 1).
• LinkedIn Page. Posting for an organisation is limited to members with one of three Page roles: ADMINISTRATOR, DIRECT_SPONSORED_CONTENT_POSTER or CONTENT_ADMIN (source 18). LinkedIn’s own Page scheduler is for a super admin or a content admin (source 22).
• Pinterest’s own scheduler needs a business account (source 35).
• Meta Business Suite. Meta’s help says to “ask the owner to assign you access to the correct business asset, such as the Facebook Page or Instagram account” (source 15).

4. Is the Instagram account linked to a Facebook Page, if your tool connects through Facebook?#

Whether Instagram needs a Facebook Page depends on how your tool connects to it. Meta documents two routes: “Instagram API with Instagram Login serves Instagram professional accounts without requiring a linked Facebook Page.” and “Instagram API with Facebook Login serves Instagram professional accounts linked to a Facebook Page.” (source 5)

So a missing Page link stops posts only when the tool connects Instagram through Facebook. Which route your tool uses is a question for the tool. The Instagram causes are covered one by one in why Instagram scheduled posts do not post.

5. Is the media inside the spec, and can the network fetch it?#

Compare the file with what the network accepts through its API:

• Instagram images. JPEG only, and not the extended JPEG formats MPO and JPS (source 1). At most 8 MB, with an aspect ratio between 4:5 and 1.91:1 (source 4).

• Instagram video. Reels: MOV or MP4, 23 to 60 frames a second, 3 seconds to 15 minutes, at most 300MB. Story video: 3 to 60 seconds, at most 100MB (source 4).

• Instagram fetches the file itself. “We cURL media used in publishing attempts, so the media must be hosted on a publicly accessible server at the time of the attempt.” (source 1) This matters when the post comes from an automation or a script and the media is a URL.

• Threads names the reason when media fails: FAILED_DOWNLOADING_VIDEO, FAILED_PROCESSING_AUDIO, FAILED_PROCESSING_VIDEO, INVALID_ASPEC_RATIO (the page’s spelling), INVALID_BIT_RATE, INVALID_DURATION, INVALID_FRAME_RATE, INVALID_AUDIO_CHANNELS, INVALID_AUDIO_CHANNEL_LAYOUT or UNKNOWN (source 14).

• TikTok (Internet Archive capture, July 19, 2026). MP4 (recommended), WebM or MOV, 23 to 60 frames a second, 360 to 4096 pixels on each side, at most 4GB, and at most 10 minutes through the upload endpoint. Ten minutes is the endpoint’s ceiling, not every account’s: “All TikTok creators can post 3-minute videos, while some have access to post 5-minute or 10-minute videos.” (source 26)

• Bluesky images. Bluesky’s own material gives two figures. The documentation text says “Individual images are limited to 1,000,000 bytes in size.” The code sample on the same page refuses a larger file with “image file size too large. 2000000 bytes maximum” (source 47), and the lexicon file sets "maxSize": 2000000 (source 48). The sample and the lexicon agree on 2,000,000 bytes.

• YouTube. The largest file an upload call accepts is 256GB (source 37).

• LinkedIn (through the API). Images: “JPG, GIF, and PNG formats”, with fewer than 36,152,320 pixels (source 56). Video: MP4, three seconds to 30 minutes. The Videos API page gives two sizes: “File size: Between 75kb and 500MB.” in its specifications, and “Maximum allowed Videos size is 5GB.” beside its upload field (source 57).

• X (through the API). Images: JPG, PNG, GIF or WEBP, at most 5 MB, and an animated GIF at most 15 MB. A post takes “up to 4 photos, 1 animated GIF or 1 video”. Video on a post: 20 minutes and 8 GB by default, 125 minutes and 16 GB for Premium or verified accounts. The limits “follow the authenticated user (X Premium / verified status), not your developer API plan” (source 58).

• Facebook Pages (through the API). Photos: .jpeg, .bmp, .png, .gif or .tiff, and “Files can not exceed 10MB.” (source 60) Video limits are not documented on the pages read.

• Pinterest. Pinterest’s spec guide is written for ads. For a standard image, which it says “Can be used in paid ad campaigns or to generate organic impressions”, it lists .PNG or .JPEG and at most 20 MB on desktop or 32 MB in the app. For video it lists .MP4, .MOV or .M4V, up to 2GB, and 4 seconds to 15 minutes (source 59). A spec for Pins created through the API is not documented on the pages read.

• Google Business Profile. Google’s help gives standards for photos on the profile, JPG or PNG between 10 KB and 5 MB and at least 250 px on each side, and requirements for videos, up to 30 seconds, up to 75 MB and 720p or higher (source 61). A separate spec for the photo in a post is not documented on the posts help page (source 44).

6. Has the account, or the tool’s app, hit a cap?#

The documentation holds two kinds of cap. One is on your account: Instagram, Threads, Bluesky and TikTok each have one. The other is on the tool’s own app or project: YouTube’s daily upload calls, LinkedIn’s per-application limit, TikTok’s daily quota of publishing users and X’s per-app limit. The second kind belongs to the tool’s developer account, not to yours. LinkedIn tells developers: “You can look up the rate limit of any endpoint your app has access to through the Developer Portal.” (source 20)

A tool can also set a cap of its own. Buffer documents one: its error library lists the message “The daily posting limit for this channel has been reached!” with the reason “You’ve hit Buffer’s daily posting limit for this channel.” (source 52), and its limits page says “These limits only count posts sent through Buffer.” (source 53) Both are quoted from Buffer’s help centre, read on October 12, 2026. We did not use Buffer for this post.

7. Does the post use something that cannot be published automatically?#

If you got a reminder on your phone, or nothing at all, the post may hold a feature the network’s API does not carry:

• Instagram. Meta’s pages disagree on shopping tags. The publishing guide (dated June 30, 2026) says “Shopping tags are not supported.” (source 1) The platform overview (dated September 28, 2026) lists product tagging as “Supported” with Facebook Login and “Not supported” with Instagram Login (source 5), and the media reference (same date) documents a product_tags parameter, “Required for product tagging.” (source 4) The publishing guide also says “Filters are not supported.” (source 1) Stories cannot be published with link, poll or location stickers, and on Reels “Music tagging is only available for original audio.” (source 4)
• TikTok (Internet Archive capture, May 21, 2026) documents a path that ends in the app, not on the profile. The status SEND_TO_USER_INBOX means “a notification has been sent to creator’s inbox to complete the draft post using TikTok’s editing flow” (source 27). A person finishes that post in the TikTok app.
• LinkedIn’s own scheduler leaves out some post types: Events and Jobs for member posts (source 21), and for Pages “events, multiple photos, reshares, polls, jobs, and service posts” (source 22; that page showed “Last updated: 10 months ago” when it was read).

What a tool does with such a post is the tool’s decision, and no network page describes it. Buffer documents its fallback, which it calls notification publishing: you “receive a notification on your mobile device when it’s time to post, then tap the notification and copy your post over to the social network to finish posting”. Its help page says this applies “When you want to use features that aren’t supported via a social network’s API, like posting to a Facebook group, adding music to Instagram Posts and Stories, or adding trending audio to TikTok posts.” (source 51) That is Buffer’s help centre, read on October 12, 2026; we did not use Buffer.

A reminder needs a phone that can receive it: Buffer sends “a push notification to whichever mobile devices have been connected to your Buffer account” (source 51). So check whether the post was set to publish by itself or to remind you.

8. Did the network block the post, or publish it where only you can see it?#

This check comes last because the answer is on the network, not in your tool.

Blocked or held by the network:

• Instagram. The error “The Instagram account is restricted.” means the account is “inactive, checkpointed, or restricted”. Meta’s advice is to “sign in to the Instagram app and complete any actions the app requires” (source 3).
• Facebook. A temporary policy block is code 368, the same text twice in a row is code 506, and a link Facebook cannot read is code 1609005 (source 10). The wording is in the error table.
• X. X’s automation rules list this among the spam to avoid: “You may not post duplicative or substantially similar posts on one account or over multiple accounts you operate.” They add that “accounts posting duplicative, spammy, or otherwise prohibited content may be subject to suspension” (source 54). The error a tool receives for such a post is not documented on the pages read.
• YouTube. “If your account has a Community Guidelines strike, your scheduled video won’t publish during the penalty period.” The video is set to private, “and you have to reschedule it when the freeze period ends” (source 40).
• Google Business Profile. Google reviews a post after it is published. With a status of Pending or Not approved, “The post doesn’t show on Search or Maps.” A phone number in the text can get a post rejected when Google cannot verify that it belongs to the business (source 44).
• TikTok (Internet Archive capture, May 21, 2026). The fail reason spam_risk_user_banned_from_posting means the creator is banned from making new posts, and spam_risk_text that the description was judged risky or spammy. Public posts also wait for moderation: “Moderation usually finishes within one minute.” and “In some cases, moderation may take a few hours.” (source 27)

Published, but hidden, because of the tool’s access level and not your account:

• TikTok (Internet Archive captures, August 13 and October 3, 2026). “All content posted by unaudited clients will be restricted to private viewing mode.” (source 24, source 25)
• Pinterest. For an app in Trial access, the access tiers table lists creating Pins as “Yes (visible only to creator)” (source 33).

This applies to an automation you built yourself and to any tool whose app is still in TikTok’s unaudited state or Pinterest’s Trial access. Whether a tool’s app has passed TikTok’s audit, or holds Standard access on Pinterest, is a question for that tool.

The network’s own scheduler failed. Meta says of Meta Business Suite: “A system error may prevent your post from being published at the scheduled time.” Its fix is to open the failed post under Scheduled “and publish it manually by clicking Publish now” (source 15).

Instagram scheduled posts not publishing#

The Instagram checks are above: the account type and Page tasks, the Facebook Page link, the media rules, the cap and what the API does not carry. One cause is not in them: a prepared post expires. The status EXPIRED means “The container was not published within 24 hours and has expired.” (source 1)

The Instagram causes have a page of their own: why Instagram scheduled posts do not post.

Facebook Page scheduled posts not publishing#

• Connection and role. Check 2 and check 3. The codes a tool receives when either ends are in the error table: code 190 with subcode 458, 460 or 463, and subcode 492 for a lost role (source 9, source 10).
• Scheduling window through the API. Check 1.
• In Meta Business Suite. Content, then Scheduled, then “Publish now” (source 15).

Threads scheduled posts not publishing#

Threads is covered by check 2 for the connection, check 5 for the reasons media fails and check 6 for the cap. As on Instagram, a prepared post expires: EXPIRED means “The container was not published within 24 hours and has expired.” (source 14)

LinkedIn scheduled posts not publishing#

• Connection. Check 2. Refresh tokens are for approved Marketing Developer Platform partners (source 17), and the pages read do not say which tools those are. Whether you sign in again every 60 days or once a year is a question to ask the tool.
• Page role and limits. Check 3 and check 6.
• LinkedIn’s own scheduler. The time zone it uses is in check 1, and the post types it leaves out are in check 7.

TikTok scheduled posts not publishing#

Everything this page says about TikTok is from Internet Archive captures of TikTok’s developer pages, dated May 21 to October 3, 2026, not from the live pages. The connection is in check 2, the video limits in check 5, the daily cap in check 6, the inbox path in check 7, and private-only posts, bans and moderation in check 8. The error codes are in the error table.

X (Twitter) scheduled posts not publishing#

• Connection and limits. Check 2 and check 6. X says “Exceeding limits results in a 429 error until the window resets.” (source 29)
• Credit, if you post through your own X developer app from your own automation or a script. X’s pages make two separate statements. Its error table lists 429 as “Rate limit or usage cap exceeded” (source 30). Its pricing page says that when a credit balance goes negative “API requests will be blocked until you add credits to cover the negative balance”, and that when a spending limit is reached “API requests will be blocked until the next billing cycle” (source 31). The pricing page does not name the status code a blocked request returns.
• X’s own scheduler. X’s help page says, under its Desktop tab: “To schedule your post to be sent at a later date/time, select the calendar icon at the bottom of the compose box and make your schedule selections, then select Confirm.” Scheduled posts are kept under “Unsent posts” (source 55). How far ahead it reaches, and what it shows when a scheduled post fails, are not documented on that page.
• The same text again. X’s automation rules forbid “duplicative or substantially similar posts”: see check 8.

YouTube scheduled videos not publishing#

• Scheduling needs a private video. The publish time “can be set only if the privacy status of the video is private”, and only if “the video has never been published” (source 39).
• A strike holds the video back. See check 8.
• Upload calls belong to the tool. A project gets 100 videos.insert calls a day by default, and “Daily quotas reset at midnight Pacific Time (PT).” (source 38) The “Page Summary” at the top of that page still says videos.insert costs “1600 points”. The body of the page says “The quota cost is 1 per call.”
• Errors. uploadLimitExceeded: “The user has exceeded the number of videos they may upload.” The number is not documented on that page. invalidPublishAt: “The request metadata specifies an invalid scheduled publishing time.” (source 37)
• Private by default? Google’s pages disagree. The reference text says “Videos uploaded from unverified API projects are not restricted to private viewing mode.” (source 37) The “Page Summary” above the videos reference says “Unverified API projects uploading videos will have them set to private by default, and must undergo an audit to make them public.” (source 39) If an uploaded video stays private, check its visibility in YouTube Studio before you blame the schedule.
• Your own Google project. If you upload from an automation built on your own Google Cloud project, and its consent screen is for an external user type with a publishing status of “Testing”, Google issues “a refresh token expiring in 7 days” (source 36). Look at the project’s publishing status when the connection ends every week.

Pinterest scheduled Pins not publishing#

• Pinterest’s own scheduler. “You can schedule a Pin up to 30 days in advance.”, one Pin at a time (source 35). The account it needs is in check 3, and its limit on scheduled Pins in check 6.
• Through a tool. The connection is in check 2, Trial access in check 6 and check 8, and the 401 error in the error table.

More on the scheduler’s own numbers in Pinterest’s scheduling limits.

Google Business Profile scheduled posts not publishing#

• Google’s own editor can schedule. You turn on “Schedule this post” and pick the date and time (source 44).
• Through a tool, the tool’s project needs Google’s approval. “If your quota limit for the Google Business Profile API is 0, you have not yet been granted access.” (source 42) Applicants must manage a profile “that is verified and active for 60+ days” (source 41).
• Not every post type. “Product Posts cannot be created using the Google My Business API at this time.” (source 43)
• Your own Google project. The 7-day refresh token for a project in “Testing” status applies here as it does to YouTube (source 36).
• Review and quota. Google’s review after publishing is in check 8, and the quota in check 6.

Bluesky scheduled posts not publishing#

• Connection. Check 2. App passwords are separate from your main password: “Accounts can create and revoke app passwords separate from their primary password.” (source 49)
• Signing in is limited too. Creating a session is limited per account to 30 in 5 minutes and 300 a day (source 46). A script that signs in again for every post can reach that. The limit on new records is in check 6.
• OAuth connections. The specification’s values are “should”, not a promise about any one server: refresh tokens “limited to 2 weeks” for public clients and “limited to 180 days” for confidential clients (source 50).

A post that went out without its link card is a different problem from a post that did not publish: see a Bluesky post with no link preview.

Error messages the networks document, and what they mean#

Find the text your tool showed you. Whether a tool passes the network’s wording through to you is up to the tool.

Where each row comes from: Facebook, source 9 and source 10. Instagram, source 3. Threads, source 14. LinkedIn, source 18 and source 19. TikTok, source 24 and source 27, both Internet Archive captures. X, source 30 and source 54. YouTube, source 37. Pinterest, source 32. Google Business Profile, source 42 and source 44. Bluesky, source 46.

Questions people ask#

Do scheduled posts still publish if my phone is off?#

It depends on whether the post was set to publish by itself or to remind you. LinkedIn says of its own Page scheduler: “Once scheduled, your post will be posted at the set date and time automatically.” (source 22) None of the pages read makes an automatic post depend on your phone being on. That it does not is our reasoning, not a sentence any network states. A post scheduled as a reminder does need your phone. Buffer’s help centre says it sends “a push notification to whichever mobile devices have been connected to your Buffer account” (source 51), and TikTok documents a path where a notification goes to the creator’s inbox to finish the draft (source 27, an Internet Archive capture of May 21, 2026). Check which of the two your post was.

Does changing my password stop my scheduled posts?#

On Facebook, and on Instagram connected through Facebook, yes. Meta’s documentation says the invalid-session response “is sent when a person logged out of your app or changed their password” (source 9). On Google, which covers YouTube and Google Business Profile, a password change ends a tool’s access only when “the refresh token contains Gmail scopes” (source 36). For LinkedIn, X, TikTok, Pinterest, Threads and Bluesky it is not documented on the pages read. After any password change, open your tool and check that each account still shows as connected.

Will a failed scheduled post publish by itself after I reconnect the account?#

The networks do not document this. It is decided by the tool. In Meta Business Suite, Meta’s help says to open the failed post under Scheduled “and publish it manually by clicking Publish now” (source 15). For any other tool, read its help centre and do not assume a retry. Before you retry by hand, look at the network to see whether the post went out.

Why did my post publish on one network but not another?#

Each network checks its own connection, account type, media rules and cap. Instagram’s image limits (source 4), a Threads token that was not refreshed within 60 days (source 12) and a LinkedIn Page role (source 18) are separate gates, so one can close while the others stay open. Meta’s help says the same of its own tool: a post scheduled to a Facebook Page and an Instagram account “may not publish to both platforms” (source 15). Read the error from the network that failed and go to its section above.

Why did my scheduled post fail with no error message?#

A tool can learn that a connection has ended only when it tries to publish, because Meta, for one, does not notify an app that a token has become invalid (source 9). Meta also says of its own scheduler that “A system error may prevent your post from being published at the scheduled time.” (source 15) Whether your tool then shows you the network’s error text is up to the tool. The networks do not document it.

Why did my scheduled post go out at the wrong time?#

Start with check 1: the time zone the scheduler used. LinkedIn’s scheduler converts times to UTC from your device’s time zone settings (source 21), and YouTube publishes at once when the scheduled time is in the past (source 39). For the other networks it is not documented on the pages read.