TikTok Is Now Distributing Its Android App for Installation via Sideloading

TikTok, on X:

We’re enhancing ways for our community to continue using TikTok by making Android Package Kits available at http://TikTok.com/download so that our U.S. Android users can download our app and create, discover, and connect on TikTok.

Tens of millions of users installing a binary straight from the Chinese Communist Party right to their phones — what could go wrong?

They also link to this support document on their website, which includes these instructions for iOS:

To access TikTok on iOS devices:

  1. Go to www.tiktok.com/download.
  2. Tap Add TikTok to Home Screen and follow the steps to create a shortcut to TikTok.com to the home screen on your device.

Which is another way of saying “Use the web app”, which is actually safe. I don’t know if they’ve always had this web app version of the app or if they scrambled to put it together during this standoff, but it’s not bad. But it’s got some very obvious layout glitches. (If you’re a regular TikTok user, I’d love to hear your thoughts on how this mobile web app compares to the actual native iOS app. Let me know.)

I suspect something is going to give on this standoff. Either (a) China relents and actually sells to a U.S. company, and TikTok comes back to the App Store and Play Store; or (b) Trump’s extralegal extension expires with no sale and Oracle and Akamai are forced to pull the plug on ByteDance’s cloud services in the US. Another extension is another possibility, of course, but I think Republican China hawks like Tom Cotton only have one grace period in them. We’ll see.

If I’m wrong and TikTok remains in this half-zombie state in the US — unavailable in the App Store or Play Store, but operational if you have the app installed on your phone — it’ll be interesting if TikTok is the app that makes the mass market actually care about the lack of sideloading on iOS. It’ll be interesting too if sideloading on Android goes mainstream because of this. This could be a fascinating experiment. Proponents of Apple permitting Mac-style software distribution on iOS often argue that normal people, who aren’t technically adept or savvy — simply won’t do it, because they don’t care enough to jump through the hoops and click through the warnings about the risks of sideloading. But maybe TikTok is so popular it could break through. Not to mention the fact that ByteDance can use TikTok itself to algorithmically boost pro-sideloading videos, and perhaps even push a trend that if you care about TikTok, you should switch to Android.

★ Saturday, 8 February 2025