Where Canva stores designs you want to use again

Canva has two separate places to save designs you like: your Favorites folder and your Drafts. Favorites is for templates, images, and design elements you want to find quickly next time. Drafts is where your own unfinished work lives. They work differently, and knowing which one to use saves you time when you're starting a new project.

The Favorites folder acts like a bookmark. You can heart individual templates, photos, fonts, or design elements from Canva's library, and they all collect in one place. This is useful if you find a layout you love and want to build several projects from it, or if you discover a photo style you return to often. Drafts, by contrast, holds the actual designs you've started making — the ones you might finish later or want to keep as a starting point for something similar.

Key Takeaways

  • Heart any template, image, or element in Canva's library to add it to your Favorites folder, which you can access from the left sidebar.
  • Your Favorites folder syncs across devices if you're logged into the same Canva account, so a design you heart on your phone appears on your desktop.
  • Drafts holds designs you've started making yourself, not templates from Canva's library — save a design as a draft if you want to return to it later.
  • You can organize Favorites into custom folders by creating a new folder and moving hearted items into it, which helps if you save designs for different purposes.

How to heart templates and images you want to save

When you're browsing Canva's template library or looking at individual images, you'll see a heart icon near the top right of each item. Click or tap that heart to add it to Favorites. The heart fills in with color once you've saved it, so you can tell at a glance which items you've already hearted.

You can heart templates from the main template search page, images from the photo library, individual design elements, and even color palettes. Every heart goes into the same Favorites folder unless you've created custom folders to organize them. This means if you heart a social media template, a background image, and a font pairing all in one session, they'll all be waiting for you in Favorites the next time you open Canva.

Finding your Favorites folder and accessing saved items

Open Canva and look at the left sidebar. You'll see a heart icon with the label "Favorites" — click it to see everything you've hearted. The folder opens to show all your saved templates, images, and elements in one view. If you're on the mobile app, tap the menu icon (three horizontal lines) and scroll down to find Favorites.

Your Favorites folder is personal to your account. If you log into Canva on a different device with the same email and password, you'll see the same Favorites list. This means you can heart a template on your phone while you're out, then open it on your desktop when you're ready to design. If you log out or switch accounts, you won't see those Favorites anymore.

Creating folders within Favorites to organize by project or purpose

If you heart a lot of designs, a single Favorites folder can get crowded. Canva lets you create custom folders inside Favorites to sort by project, client, season, or any category that makes sense to you. Click the "Create folder" button at the top of your Favorites view, give it a name like "Social Media Templates" or "Client A Branding," and then drag hearted items into that folder.

Once you've created custom folders, you can move items between them by right-clicking (or long-pressing on mobile) and selecting "Move to folder." You can also delete custom folders if you no longer need them — the hearted items go back to your main Favorites list rather than disappearing. This organization step takes a few minutes but saves time later when you're looking for a specific template among dozens of saved designs.

The difference between Favorites and Drafts

Favorites holds templates and design elements from Canva's library that you've marked with a heart. Drafts holds designs you've actually started creating yourself — the ones where you've opened a template or blank canvas and made changes. When you close a design without publishing it, Canva automatically saves it as a draft.

This distinction matters because Favorites is for inspiration and reusable starting points, while Drafts is for work in progress. If you want to save a template as a starting point for multiple projects, heart it in Favorites. If you want to save a design you've partially finished so you can come back to it later, it's already in Drafts. You don't need to do anything — Canva saves it for you.

Searching within Favorites when your saved list gets long

Once you've hearted dozens of templates and images, scrolling through Favorites becomes slow. Canva includes a search box at the top of the Favorites folder. Type a keyword — like "Instagram," "birthday," or "blue" — and Canva filters your saved items to show only matches. This search looks at the template name, description, and tags, so searching for "social" will find templates tagged for social media even if the word doesn't appear in the title.

If you've created custom folders, you can search within a single folder by opening that folder first and then using the search box. This narrows results even further. For example, if you have a folder called "Client Work" and you search for "newsletter" inside that folder, you'll see only newsletters you've saved for client projects.

Removing items from Favorites when you no longer need them

If you've hearted a design and later decide you don't want it cluttering your Favorites anymore, click the heart icon again to unheart it. The heart outline returns to empty, and the item disappears from your Favorites folder. You can unheart items from inside the Favorites folder itself or from the library where you originally found them — either way removes it from your saved list.

Unhearthing an item doesn't delete it from Canva's library. The template or image is still available if you search for it later and want to heart it again. This means you can clean up your Favorites without losing access to designs you might want in the future.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I share my Favorites folder with someone else?

Canva does not have a built-in feature to share your Favorites folder directly. However, you can share individual designs you've created by sending a link to a collaborator, or you can invite someone to edit a design with you. If you want someone to see your saved templates, you'd need to send them the links individually or describe where to find them in Canva's library.

What happens to my Favorites if I delete my Canva account?

Your Favorites folder is tied to your account. If you delete your account, your Favorites list is deleted along with it. If you think you might want to reference your saved designs later, take screenshots or export a list of template names before closing your account.

Can I heart the same template more than once?

No. Once you've hearted a template, the heart stays filled. Clicking it again unhears it. You can only save one copy of each template to Favorites, but you can use that template as many times as you want to create different designs.

Do my Favorites sync if I use Canva on both desktop and mobile?

Yes. As long as you're logged into the same Canva account on both devices, your Favorites folder syncs automatically. A template you heart on your phone appears in Favorites on your desktop within a few seconds, and vice versa.

Can I organize Favorites by date or by how often I use them?

Canva does not sort Favorites automatically by date saved or by usage frequency. You can only organize by creating custom folders and moving items manually. If you want to keep your most-used templates at the top, create a folder called "Frequent" and move your go-to designs there.