The deadline is nearly here: Unless the Supreme Court steps in to save it, TikTok will be legally banned in the United States on Jan. 19. If you’re one of the 170 million Americans who use TikTok every day, you might be a bit upset by the situation.
Here’s the good news: Even if the U.S. bans TikTok in this country, that won’t stop you from being able to access it. Sure, it might make it much more difficult to access, but with a little preparation, you’ll be able to keep scrolling on Jan. 19 as you had the day before—at least, for a while.
Why is the U.S. trying to ban TikTok?
We’ve broken the situation down in our explainer here, but here’s a brief summary. The U.S. has long had concerns about TikTok, going back to the first Trump Administration. The issue is largely based around national security: TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese-based company, that must comply with Chinese law. As such, there are concerns that ByteDance could hand the Chinese government data on the platform’s millions of American users, as well as manipulate the infamously addictively algorithm to control what content Americans specifically see.
It’s not necessarily the app itself that Congress and the President are focused on: It’s the Chinese government. That’s why the “ban” is only part of the law President Biden signed back in April. The language gave ByteDance nine months to find an American-based buyer for TikTok in the U.S. If it had, ByteDance could have divested its stake in TikTok, and the app could have continued to without interruption. The company decided not to do that, however, insisting TikTok (and its proprietary algorithm) was not for sale. So, here we are.
Regardless of your opinion on the matter, if the Supreme Court doesn’t interfere, the ban is happening. What you can control, however, is your ability to access TikTok in a post-ban American. Here’s how:
Make sure you have TikTok on your phone
If the ban does indeed go through, it seems very likely companies like Apple and Google will remove TikTok from their app stores in the U.S. When that happens, the app will no longer be available to download through official channels: If you try to search for TikTok on the iOS App Store or Google Play Store, you’ll probably just find a bunch of similar social media apps, or apps built for TikTok—not TikTok itself.
That’s not surprising: It wouldn’t be much of a ban if the government couldn’t force companies to remove apps from their marketplaces. However, while the forces at be can ensure apps like TikTok are barred from app stores, they can’t actually remove apps from your device itself. If you already have TikTok on your iPhone or Android device, it’s staying there—until you delete it yourself.
If you already have TikTok on your phone, great. If not, and you want to make sure you can keep using the app after Jan. 19, download it now. Here are some links to various marketplaces to get you started:
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iOS App Store (also available on iPadOS, iMessage, and visionOS)
Sideload TikTok (Android only)
If you forget to download the app before the takes effect, don’t worry: You can still download it, at least on Android.
Unlike iOS (in the United States, anyway), Android allows you to sideload apps, or, in other words, install apps from unofficial sources. This has long been a perk of Android over iOS, and although Apple has opened up sideloading for users in the EU, it remains Android-only for most of the world. As such, if you really wanted to, you could download the latest version of TikTok to your Android device even if it is no longer available on the Play Store.
You’ll want to be careful here, though: Sideloading offers few protections that the app you’re installing is legit. That’s why it’s always better to go through official channels when possible. Google doesn’t always catch the malicious apps, but it does find a lot of them. Going rogue, you run certain risks, especially since the world will know that Android users in the U.S. are looking for unofficial TikTok downloads.
If you do go down this path, use APKMirror rather than a cursory Google search. The site is trusted, and is a popular destination for sideloading. Just make sure to download TikTok itself, and not one of the other variations of the app that you might see in a search.
Get a VPN
While no one can take TikTok off your phone, they can break it. Again, it’s not clear exactly what’s going to happen if the ban goes into effect, but one strong possibility is ByteDance will simply block network access to the app for users in the U.S. After the 19th, you may open TikTok, but instead of a login screen or your FYP, you’ll be greeted by a message informing you why TikTok is banned in your country. (Perhaps we’ll see something cheeky about the First Amendment in the “Land of the Free.”)
That’ll be enough for many (if not most), who will then continue on to American-based short form videos apps, but not you: Instead, you will be able to keep using TikTok, as if there was never a ban at all, because you will have installed a VPN on your device.
A VPN (virtual private network) lets you access parts of the internet your country or government wouldn’t otherwise permit. It works by encrypting your connection and routing it through servers outside your country. If the U.S. doesn’t allow connections to TikTok, for example, a VPN could make it look like you’re accessing the internet from, say, Portugal. You can watch TikTok in Portugal without issue, so if TikTok’s servers think you’re in the westernmost country in Europe, it’ll connect you. Ban avoided.
There are a ton of VPNs out there to choose from, but you don’t need to get fancy (or even spend any money) to access TikTok post-ban. All you need is a VPN that actively routes your traffic to a country that hasn’t banned the app, as well as a service that will route traffic within apps—not just within your web browser. Otherwise, you’ll only be able to access TikTok in your browser. While that’s fine on something like a Mac, accessing TikTok through the app is a much better experience, and one most of us likely want to use anyway. As such, it’s worth prioritizing with your VPN.
Proton VPN, for example, has a great free tier, and should work within the TikTok app on both iOS and Android. I just tested it on Tubi, which blocked me from using it: Proton VPN routed my traffic through Amsterdam, a country Tubi doesn’t support, and since Tubi thinks I’m trying to access it from Amsterdam, no Tubi for me. The opposite, then, should be the case when trying to access TikTok in the U.S.
Don’t use the app forever
I know I just said that TikTok’s app is the best way to experience the platform, but if the U.S. does ban TikTok next week, you really shouldn’t use it forever.
Here’s the deal: TikTok is staying on your iPhone or Android if you installed it already. But if the developers are no longer supporting the app in the U.S., that means there will be no new features added for your app, nor any fixes for bugs that may appear. So, you might encounter some weird glitches or crashes the longer you use the app following the ban, and you won’t see any of the changes that TikTok makes to the app in supported parts of the world.
But that’s not my concern here. If the only issue was an unstable TikTok experience, well, whatever. But, eventually, the app becomes a security liability. Just as TikTok developers won’t be able to push new features or bug fixes for the app, they also won’t be able to patch any security vulnerabilities they discover down the line. And there will be security vulnerabilities down the line: That’s just an inevitability of software. Eventually, flaws will appear that TikTok will patch for the app in countries it supports, but because it’ll be cut off from the U.S., you won’t see those updates. Instead, you’ll use an app with a growing list of security flaws that bad actors will exploit for their own gain. It probably won’t happen overnight, but after some time, the app becomes a real risk to keep on your device—especially when malicious users know that a country as large as the United States has people using an app without security patches.
Ironically, in banning the app for national security reasons, the U.S. government will have turned it into a security risk of a different making.
But will you want to keep using TikTok anyway?
The major question in a world in which the U.S. successfully bans TikTok is this: Will you actually want to keep using the app? Sure, at first, everything will likely seem the same, but as the app gets buggier and less secure, the experience will undoubtedly lose its luster.
But it goes beyond that, too. American creators are likely not going to bother posting to an app that is banned in their country, and will switch full-time to other established platforms like Instagram and YouTube. As more and more creators leave, you’ll see less of the content you’re used to engaging with—content you could find on apps that aren’t banned.
Must of the rest of the world will still be posting to TikTok, of course, but it will be interesting to see if any ripple effects come out of this potential ban. Will the loss of hundreds of millions of users inspire creators outside the U.S. to focus on platforms Americans can use? If so, will TikTok start to lose even more content?
There are simply too many unknowns at this point. For all we know, the Supreme Court is going to save TikTok, and this entire post will be full of useless advice. However, there’s a very real chance this ban does go through, and, with it, a likely seismic shift in the future of short-form video. If you do follow the advice here, you’ll at least get a front row seat to TikTok’s future—whatever it may be.