TikTok Comes Back to the US App Store And Play Store

Apple and Google have both agreed to bring back TikTok to their mobile app stores in the US nearly a month after President Trump postponed the ban of the app until April 5. The two companies previously removed the app from their digital storefronts to avoid potential fines in the case they didn’t comply with the new security law that banned the app in the US.

TikTok was still available for iOS and Android users in the US who didn’t delete the app from their phones. Earlier this week, ByteDance tried to circumvent the absence of TikTok on the Google Play Store by inviting Android users to download TikTok directly from its website, but that’s no longer necessary.

“The TikTok app is now available for download from the App Store and Google Play. Our U.S. users can download the latest version of our app and continue to create, discover, and share what they love on TikTok,” ByteDance announced today. The company’s popular CapCut video editing app is also back on US app stores alongside Lemon8, another ByteDance property that integrates with TikTok.

The future of TikTok in the US is still unclear right now as ByteDance has yet to agree to sell TikTok’s US operations to a non-Chinese company. President Trump previously floated the idea of a joint venture where the US would own half of TikTok. “What I’m thinking of saying to someone is buy it and give half to the US, half, and we’ll give you a permit,” Trump said during a press conference about artificial intelligence in January.

While TikTok may once again disappear in the US, its competitors have been racing to copy its main features: Instagram has been giving more attention to its TikTok-like Reels videos and plans to launch Edits, an alternative to ByteDance’s CapCut app on March 13. We’ve also seen Twitter/X add a new video tab to its mobile app while Bluesky launched a custom feed for vertical videos.